what is the difference between link_to, redirect_to, and render?

Question

I am confused about the main difference(s) among link_to, redirect_to and render in Rails. anyone can please explain.

Answer 1

From the Documentation:

Regarding rendering a view vs redirecting a request

. . . render tells Rails which view (or other asset) to use in constructing a response. The redirect_to method does something completely different: it tells the browser to send a new request for a different URL.

Regarding rendering a view

. . . render :action doesn't run any code in the target action . . .

Regarding redirecting a request

. . . Your code stops running and waits for a new request for the browser. It just happens that you've told the browser what request it should make next, by sending back an HTTP 302 status code.

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Basically:

link_to is a helper method to generate URLs usually used in your views (.html.erb files)

render tells your controller to render a view without passing any data (say, from a form) to the next controller action.

redirect_to does a 302 page redirect, passing data (say, from a form) to either a controller action on your web app, or an external app (ex: google, facebook, a web article you liked, etc)