my form_for isn't working.

That's right. You should not use the link to method. Instead, you should set up the form and the Sinatra route as you see in the video. But then, instead of writing to the text file, you should use the destroy method on the model object. That will delete the object in the database.

Thanks! If I wanted to send the post path to a database instead of to a file, could I embed php in the HTML forms. Would that work with Sinatra.

MaryAnn Eleanya Integrating PHP with any Ruby program would probably be technically difficult, and the result wouldn't perform very well. You'd succeed much more quickly (and get better results) if you research integrating ActiveRecord with Sinatra. But really, if you're at the point where you're thinking about the need for a database, it might be time to consider switching your entire app from Sinatra to Rails.

I assume that when you click the submit button, you get the response "the post route is correctly working"...

Next you'll need to fix the name and id attributes on your form input tags. See this video for info on how to do that. You can check the parameters the form is sending like this:

post("/send") do
  puts params.inspect
end

When you submit the form, the value of params will appear among the other output in your terminal (not in your browser). You'll need to keep tweaking the form HTML until the value of params is correct.

You'll also need to ensure that ActiveRecord is saving objects to the database. I haven't tested this code, but it will be something like:

post("/send") do
  @medium = Medium.new(name: "Test Name")
  @medium.save
  # Again, this output will appear in your terminal
  puts "Object created in Sinatra route:"
  puts @medium
  puts "Same record, retrieved from database:"
  puts Medium.find(@medium.id)
end

Finally, once your form is set up correctly and you're sure ActiveRecord is working, you'll need to use the params from the form to set up the model object attributes:

post("/send") do
  @medium = Medium.new(name: params[:name])
  @medium.save
  redirect "/some/other/path"
end

The delete method posted on this video isn't working for me since I am still using sinatra. How can I delete a post without using the "_method" method.

For anyone else reading, please note that this reply is applicable only to Sinatra, not Rails...

MaryAnn Eleanya Which video are you referring to? Can you post a link to it?

You'll need to set up a form and Sinatra route similar to what you see in this video. Within the route block, you'll need to look up the ActiveRecord model object you want to delete, and then call the destroy method on it.

You wouldn't use link_to, because that method only works with Rails, and you're using Sinatra. However, you are also using ActiveRecord. ActiveRecord is part of Rails, but it can also be used separately from Rails. So you need to take the code for the delete form and delete route from the Sinatra videos, and the code to delete the database model object from the Rails videos.

As shown in this video, you will need to create an HTML form with a method attribute of post, containing an <input type="hidden"...> tag with a name of _method and a value of delete. You will also need to create a delete Sinatra route.

But then, within that delete Sinatra route, you would NOT call a delete_content method. Instead, you would use the ActiveRecord find method on your model class to find a particular instance of your model class that you want to delete. Then you would call the destroy method on that model object.

I've figured it out, but it is now treating the delete request as a post request.

Try this:

# in test.rb
class Test
  post '/@mediums.name' do
    "Hello World"
  end
end

I'm guessing the form HTML code in your .erb file isn't set up correctly. Can you post that ERB code here?

Your delete action has a path of "/@mediums.name/:id". That's not valid. You probably want a path of "/mediums/:id".

class Test < Sinatra::Base
delete ("/mediums/:id") do 
Mediums.get(params[:id]).destroy
redirect "/names"
end

end

<form method="post" action= "/mediums/<%=@mediums.id%>">
    <input name="_method" type="hidden" value="delete">
    <input type="submit"  value="Delete name">
</form>

I'm just now noticing that you have Mediums.get(params[:id]).destroy. You probably mean Mediums.find(params[:id]).destroy.