What is the difference between _url and _path while using the routes in rails

Question

When we define routes in routes.rb using the name like map.some_link.We can use the link in two ways- some_link_url, some_link_p

Answer 1

Same answer as Petros, except that modern browsers handle relative redirects just fine. (I'd comment on his answer, but I can't yet.)

Answer 2

I had the same question and I wrote a small post about this in my blog

The reason is summarized here (I found this on a forum):

*_path are for views because ahrefs are implicitly linked to the current URL. So it’d be a waste of bytes to repeat it over and over. In the controller, though, *_url is needed for redirect_to because the HTTP specification mandates that the Location: header in 3xx redirects is a complete URL.

Here is another explanation which says it depends on whether we need to use an absolute URI when linking to an SSL site from a non-SSL site, and vice versa.

What I have read so far, doesn't suggest that any of them is more secure than the other. It really comes down to what is the "proper" usage.

Answer 3

An example of the difference for a resource called "user":

users_url # => http://localhost:3000/users
users_path  # => /users

Answer 4

_url will give the entire path. As it contains the domain name and protocol, you can use it for eg. to send email or redirecting to another domain, etc.

_path will return the path which is after '/' without domain,protocol etc. So you can use it every now and then(I guess), where you don't require details of domain.

Answer 5

By secure if you mean not exposing all the data passed, then _path is better as it generates a relative url, something like '/login' but _path would give 'http://localhost:3000/login'. Please refer to this blog post i found sometime back regarding the same. When _url is better than _path

Answer 6

path is relative while url is absolute.