rails: Deleting article in section 6.5 of getting started guide doesn't work

Pull request #43430 raised @ghiculescu

If anyone would like to open a PR to correct these usages, please do!

See this discussion about the redirect issue. This was never addressed as far as I can see.

About the tutorial: maybe button_to should be used for the delete link, as using <a> for destructive actions is discouraged. That would work regardless of JS framework.

Some progress (I think)

By telling the controller to respond to the DELETE request with a redirect_to with status 303, I get the behaviour I think we’re looking for.

Not sure this is the simplest or canonical way to achieve the result though…

in articles_controller.rb:

def destroy
    @article = Article.find(params[:id])
    @article.destroy

    redirect_to root_path, status: 303
  end

index.html.erb:

<ul>
  <li><%= link_to "Edit", edit_article_path(@article) %></li>
  <li><%= link_to "Destroy", article_path(@article),
                  "data-turbo-method": :delete,
                  data: { confirm: "Are you sure?" } %></li>
</ul>

NOTE, I still don’t get a confirmation dialog for the deletion. Another puzzle…

Was excited to see the release of Rails 7 and have been going through the getting started page and found myself stuck due to this issue. I expect others may bounce off in frustration when the getting started guide doesn’t work vs. digging for the workaround. Looking forward to seeing the PR merged shortly!

FYI: a workaround to show a confirmation dialog via Turbo on link_to:

<%= link_to 'Destroy', pattern_path(pattern), "data-turbo-method": "delete", "data-turbo-confirm": 'Are you sure?' %>

This works in 7.0alpha2 by now, and I feel this is not official.

Think I’ve stumbled into another issue…

My show.html.erb looks like this:

<h1><%= @article.title %></h1>

<p><%= @article.body %></p>

<ul>
  <li><%= link_to "Edit", edit_article_path(@article) %></li>
  <li><%= link_to "Destroy", article_path(@article), "data-turbo-method": :"delete" %></a></li>
  </ul>

Controller looks like this:

def destroy
    @article = Article.find(params[:id])
    @article.destroy

    redirect_to root_path
  end

When I navigate to an article and hit the destroy link I get the following server logs:

Started GET "/articles/8" for ::1 at 2021-10-11 21:57:00 +0100
Processing by ArticlesController#show as HTML
  Parameters: {"id"=>"8"}
  Article Load (0.1ms)  SELECT "articles".* FROM "articles" WHERE "articles"."id" = ? LIMIT ?  [["id", 8], ["LIMIT", 1]]
  ↳ app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:7:in `show'
  Rendering layout layouts/application.html.erb
  Rendering articles/show.html.erb within layouts/application
  Rendered articles/show.html.erb within layouts/application (Duration: 0.2ms | Allocations: 71)
  Rendered layout layouts/application.html.erb (Duration: 4.7ms | Allocations: 2346)
Completed 200 OK in 7ms (Views: 5.2ms | ActiveRecord: 0.1ms | Allocations: 3097)


Started DELETE "/articles/8" for ::1 at 2021-10-11 21:57:09 +0100
Processing by ArticlesController#destroy as TURBO_STREAM
  Parameters: {"id"=>"8"}
  Article Load (0.3ms)  SELECT "articles".* FROM "articles" WHERE "articles"."id" = ? LIMIT ?  [["id", 8], ["LIMIT", 1]]
  ↳ app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:39:in `destroy'
  TRANSACTION (0.1ms)  begin transaction
  ↳ app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:40:in `destroy'
  Article Destroy (0.5ms)  DELETE FROM "articles" WHERE "articles"."id" = ?  [["id", 8]]
  ↳ app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:40:in `destroy'
  TRANSACTION (1.3ms)  commit transaction
  ↳ app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:40:in `destroy'
Redirected to http://localhost:3000/
Completed 302 Found in 7ms (ActiveRecord: 2.2ms | Allocations: 2079)


Started DELETE "/" for ::1 at 2021-10-11 21:57:09 +0100
  
ActionController::RoutingError (No route matches [DELETE] "/"):
  
Started GET "/articles/8" for ::1 at 2021-10-11 21:57:09 +0100
Processing by ArticlesController#show as HTML
  Parameters: {"id"=>"8"}
  Article Load (0.1ms)  SELECT "articles".* FROM "articles" WHERE "articles"."id" = ? LIMIT ?  [["id", 8], ["LIMIT", 1]]
  ↳ app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:7:in `show'
Completed 404 Not Found in 1ms (ActiveRecord: 0.1ms | Allocations: 870)


  
ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound (Couldn't find Article with 'id'=8):
  
app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:7:in `show'

So, what I think I’m seeing here is:

1. A delete sent to the article path
2. A redirect being served to the root path
3. The browser retaining the delete verb and requesting a delete on the root path.
4. a routing error since that’s an unsupported route.
5. a crash when the app issues a GET for the article which has now been deleted.

What’s the emoji for ‘in over my head’? 🤯