Because your route is in the API + v1 namespace, you actually need to redirect to the api_v1_hotel_url(@hotel)
after you successfully create your resource. Of course, this is an API and there is no real redirecting, but the default Rails responder doesn't know that. It also doesn't know about your routing namespaces.
With just the default responder, you would have to do
respond_with :api, :v1, @hotel
So that Rails will build a URL that exists. Alternatively, you can create a custom responder that remove the :location
option. Here is the default responder: http://api.rubyonrails.org/files/actionpack/lib/action_controller/metal/responder_rb.html
Reading through the source code for that class is very helpful in understanding respond_with
. For example, you don't need to use if record.save
before you use respond_with
with this Responder. Rails will check if the record saved successfully for you and render a 422 with errors if it failed to save.
Anyway, you can see that the responder sets up a lot of variables in it's initializer:
def initialize(controller, resources, options={})
@controller = controller
@request = @controller.request
@format = @controller.formats.first
@resource = resources.last
@resources = resources
@options = options
@action = options.delete(:action)
@default_response = options.delete(:default_response)
end
If you subclassed this responder, you could make something like this:
class CustomResponder < ActionController::Responder
def initialize(*)
super
@options[:location] = nil
end
end
You can set a controller's responder using responder=
:
class AnyController < ActionController::Base
self.responder = CustomResponder
# ...
end
To be clear, let me recap:
- When you use
respond_with
, Rails will try to infer what route to redirect to after a successful create. Imagine you had a web UI where you can create hotels. After a hotel is created, you will be redirected to that hotel'sshow
page in the standard Rails flow. That is what Rails is trying to do here. - Rails does not understand your route namespaces when inferring the route, so it attempts
hotel_url
- a route which does not exist! - Adding symbols in front of the resource will allow Rails to infer the route correctly, in this case
api_v1_hotel_url
- In an API, you can make a custom responder which just sets the inferred location to
nil
, since you don't actually need to redirect anywhere with a simple JSON response. Custom responders can also be useful in many other ways. Check out the source code.