How do I defined a variable link_to to an external URL

Question

On my site a user has a personal profile with a link to his personal external website. The url of the sites I store in a postgresql database under the name website

Answer 1

I'm working with Rails 5 and I had the same problem. All I need to do to fix it, was to include the protocol on my link_to tag. E.g. I had www.google.com.mx, then, it should be http://www.google.com.mx. And that's it it works just fine like in the official doc is mentioned.

So, finally I just have something like this in my view:

<%= link_to (content_tag(:i, "help", class: 'material-icons tiny')), " http://www.google.com.mx", target: "_blank", rel: "alternate" %>

Which is the same as:

<%= link_to "help", "http://www.google.com.mx", target: "_blank", rel: "alternate" %>

I hope it helps somebody else.