Rails 3: GET request with email crops off TLD

Question

I am trying to use a controller and action to do a simple check to see if a user account with that email address exists or not.

The controller's action looks like this:

def checkEmail
    email = params["email"]
    if Account.find_by_email(email).blank?
      render :inline=>"true"
    else
      render :inline=>"false"
    end
  end

And to test this action, I can go to:

http://localhost:3000/home/checkEmail/email@website.com

When I do so, I can see in the Ruby console the following being queried:

Parameters: {"email"=>"email@website"}
  Account Load (0.0ms)  SELECT `accounts`.* FROM `accounts` WHERE `accounts`.`email` = 'email@website' LIMIT 1

You can see that the TLD of the email address has been cropped off.

However, when I go to:

http://localhost:3000/home/checkEmail/email@website.co.uk

I get a routing error:

No route matches [GET] "/home/checkEmail/email@website.co.uk"

My routes.rb file looks like this:

Gallery::Application.routes.draw do

  #Match home URL
  match 'home(/:file)' => "home#index"
  match 'home/checkUser/:username' => "home#checkUser"
  match 'home/checkEmail/:email' => "home#checkEmail"

  root :to=> "home#index"
end

Answer 1

Yeah, the default behavior in Rails is to treat a dot (.) in a route as a format specifier, instead of part of the parameter. In order to match the dot as part of the parameter, specify the route like this:

match "/home/checkEmail/:email" => "home#checkEmail", :constraints => { :email=> /[^\/]*/ }

Here's a post that describes the problem and the fix: http://coding-journal.com/rails-3-routing-parameters-with-dots/