render a template with link_to rails 3.1

Question

I am trying to render a template by clicking on a link .

Here is what I am doing :-

link_to "Profile", render :template => "profile"

This gives me an error:-

SyntaxError in Settings#account_setting

Here is my settings controller :-

class SettingsController < ApplicationController
    before_filter :authenticate_user!

    def profile
        @user = current_user
        request.method.inspect
        if request.method == "POST"
          @user.update_attributes(params[:user])
          flash[:notice] = "You updated your profile successfully."
        end
    end

    def account_setting
    end

end

This is the error :-

syntax error, unexpected tSYMBEG, expecting keyword_do or '{' or '(' on this line %li=link_to"profile", render :template => "profile"

This is the generated markup of the error :-

syntax error, unexpected tSYMBEG, expecting keyword_do or '{' or '(' ...se((link_to("profile", render :template => "profile"

What could be the issue?

Answer 1

You are doing it wrong.

= link_to 'Profile', @profile

This will generate something similar to

<a href="/profiles/1">Profile</a>

upon clicking which ProfilesController#show will be called and corresponding view rendered.

You can, of course, fire an ajax query here, fetch rendered template and display it dynamically, but I think, it's too early for you now.