How can the same request by interpreted as JSON and as / in Rails?

Question

note: the gist of the question is in the first update below

I'm maintaing a rails project and I noticed that if I do a GET "/request/past_list" I'm routed to RequestController#show

in routes.rb I got:

get '/request/past_list', to: 'request#past_list'
get '/request/:id', to: 'request#show'

and running rake routes I get (predictably):

request_past_list GET     /request/past_list(.:format)     request#past_list
                  GET     /request/:id(.:format)           request#show

So i'm wondering why is rails thinking that my past_list string in the url is actually an :id?

for now this is the workaround I implemented:

def show
  if ((params[:id]).is_a? String and (params[:id].eql? "past_list"))
    past_list  
  else
    ..

but i'm already having trouble sleeping at night because of it.. i'm hoping to know what's really going on to rest my conscience

p.s. this is what the network request looks like on chrome dev tools, just in case if there is some detail that may raise a red flag:

enter image description here

update: i noticed a difference between how the request is interpreted in my current code:

Started GET "/request/past_list" for 127.0.0.1 at 2014-02-13 15:41:14 +0200
Processing by RequestController#show as JSON

and the old working one i dug up from git history:

Started GET "/request/past_list" for 127.0.0.1 at 2014-02-13 15:43:40 +0200
Processing by RequestController#past_list as */*

the thing is the old working code has the exact same routes.rb file.. no changes there!

so i guess it's a difference between interpreting the request as JSON and as */*..

second update: here are two questions related to this */* business: When do Rails controllers render as JS, HTML, or 'q'? and Rails 3 Processing by */*

change `past_list` to `:past_list` in your `routes.rb` then you should be getting `params[:past_list]` or you write a redirection in your `show` action when the `params[:id] == past_list` — bjhaid, Feb 13 '14 at 13:22
@Bala double quotes didn't work, same result (see my update though) — abbood, Feb 13 '14 at 13:45
@bjhaid i'm afraid that work around isn't much better than mine.. look at my update though — abbood, Feb 13 '14 at 13:46

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

0

it turns out I had this in my routes.rb file:

get '/request/:id', to: 'request#show', :defaults => {:format => :json}

so i simply deleted it.

To give you guys a take away from this discussion.. the trick was this git command:

$ git diff $things_were_working_commit..$things_weren't_working_commit -- routes.rb

after that it was all obvious!

edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

Community

answered Feb 14 '14 at 08:05

abbood

How can the same request by interpreted as JSON and as */* in Rails?