Action Controllers are the core of a web request in Rails. They are made up of one or more actions that are executed on request and then either render a template or redirect to another action. An action is defined as a public method on the controller, which will automatically be made accessible to the web-server through Rails Routes.

A sample controller could look like this:

class GuestBookController < ActionController::Base
  def index
    @entries = Entry.find(:all)
  end

  def sign
    Entry.create(params[:entry])
    redirect_to :action => "index"
  end
end

Actions, by default, render a template in the app/views directory corresponding to the name of the controller and action after executing code in the action. For example, the index action of the GuestBookController would render the template app/views/guestbook/index.erb by default after populating the @entries instance variable.

Unlike index, the sign action will not render a template. After performing its main purpose (creating a new entry in the guest book), it initiates a redirect instead. This redirect works by returning an external "302 Moved" HTTP response that takes the user to the index action.

The index and sign represent the two basic action archetypes used in Action Controllers. Get-and-show and do-and-redirect. Most actions are variations of these themes.

Requests

Requests are processed by the Action Controller framework by extracting the value of the "action" key in the request parameters. This value should hold the name of the action to be performed. Once the action has been identified, the remaining request parameters, the session (if one is available), and the full request with all the http headers are made available to the action through instance variables. Then the action is performed.

The full request object is available with the request accessor and is primarily used to query for http headers. These queries are made by accessing the environment hash, like this:

def server_ip
  location = request.env["SERVER_ADDR"]
  render :text => "This server hosted at #{location}"
end

Parameters

All request parameters, whether they come from a GET or POST request, or from the URL, are available through the params method which returns a hash. For example, an action that was performed through /weblog/list?category=All&limit=5 will include { "category" => "All", "limit" => 5 } in params.

It’s also possible to construct multi-dimensional parameter hashes by specifying keys using brackets, such as:

<input name="post[name]" type="text" value="david" />
<input name="post[address]" type="text" value="hyacintvej" />

A request stemming from a form holding these inputs will include { "post" => { "name" => "david", "address" => "hyacintvej" } }. If the address input had been named "post[address][street]", the params would have included { "post" => { "address" => { "street" => "hyacintvej" } } }. There’s no limit to the depth of the nesting.

Sessions

Sessions allows you to store objects in between requests. This is useful for objects that are not yet ready to be persisted, such as a Signup object constructed in a multi-paged process, or objects that don’t change much and are needed all the time, such as a User object for a system that requires login. The session should not be used, however, as a cache for objects where it’s likely they could be changed unknowingly. It’s usually too much work to keep it all synchronized — something databases already excel at.

You can place objects in the session by using the session method, which accesses a hash:

session[:person] = Person.authenticate(user_name, password)

And retrieved again through the same hash:

Hello #{session[:person]}

For removing objects from the session, you can either assign a single key to nil, like session[:person] = nil, or you can remove the entire session with reset_session.

Sessions are stored in a browser cookie that’s cryptographically signed, but unencrypted, by default. This prevents the user from tampering with the session but also allows him to see its contents.

Do not put secret information in session!

Other options for session storage are:

ActiveRecordStore: sessions are stored in your database, which works better than PStore with multiple app servers and, unlike CookieStore, hides your session contents from the user. To use ActiveRecordStore, set

config.action_controller.session_store = :active_record_store

in your environment.rb and run rake db:sessions:create.

MemCacheStore: sessions are stored as entries in your memcached cache. Set the session store type in environment.rb:

 config.action_controller.session_store = :mem_cache_store

This assumes that memcached has been installed and configured properly.  See the MemCacheStore docs for more information.

Responses

Each action results in a response, which holds the headers and document to be sent to the user’s browser. The actual response object is generated automatically through the use of renders and redirects and requires no user intervention.

Renders

Action Controller sends content to the user by using one of five rendering methods. The most versatile and common is the rendering of a template. Included in the Action Pack is the Action View, which enables rendering of ERb templates. It’s automatically configured. The controller passes objects to the view by assigning instance variables:

def show
  @post = Post.find(params[:id])
end

Which are then automatically available to the view:

Title: <%= @post.title %>

You don’t have to rely on the automated rendering. Especially actions that could result in the rendering of different templates will use the manual rendering methods:

def search
  @results = Search.find(params[:query])
  case @results
    when 0 then render :action => "no_results"
    when 1 then render :action => "show"
    when 2..10 then render :action => "show_many"
  end
end

Read more about writing ERb and Builder templates in link:classes/ActionView/Base.html.

Redirects

Redirects are used to move from one action to another. For example, after a create action, which stores a blog entry to a database, we might like to show the user the new entry. Because we’re following good DRY principles (Don’t Repeat Yourself), we’re going to reuse (and redirect to) a show action that we’ll assume has already been created. The code might look like this:

def create
  @entry = Entry.new(params[:entry])
  if @entry.save
    # The entry was saved correctly, redirect to show
    redirect_to :action => 'show', :id => @entry.id
  else
    # things didn't go so well, do something else
  end
end

In this case, after saving our new entry to the database, the user is redirected to the show method which is then executed.

Calling multiple redirects or renders

An action may contain only a single render or a single redirect. Attempting to try to do either again will result in a DoubleRenderError:

def do_something
  redirect_to :action => "elsewhere"
  render :action => "overthere" # raises DoubleRenderError
end

If you need to redirect on the condition of something, then be sure to add "and return" to halt execution.

def do_something
  redirect_to(:action => "elsewhere") and return if monkeys.nil?
  render :action => "overthere" # won't be called unless monkeys is nil
end