Using Rails link_to for links that post

Question

I have a link that I need to submit a post request with. Normally, I'd use jQuery and prevent the link's default behavior and then submit a form to the destination. This seems like something Rails should be able to help me out with. Sure enough, the link_to method has an option for specifying a POST http method:

link_to "Profile", 'http://example.com/profile', method: :post

That works, but I need to add 2 parameters too. I tried:

link_to "Profile", 'http://example.com/profile', method: post, param1: 'value1', param2: 'value2'

That just added those parameters to the <a> HTML element, but didn't submit those when clicking the link:

<a rel="nofollow" param1="value1" param2="value2" data-method="post" href="http://example.com/profile">Profile</a>

Is there a way to do a POST request with parameters using link_to or any other Rails method? I'm using Rails 3.2.9.

Answer 1

The short answer is that if what you mean by "parameters" is form fields, then you simply can't do this (at least not in a straightforward way that I can see). You should instead use a form with a submit button, styled to look like a link (if that's what you want it to look like).

If on the other hand you had meant query parameters, then this would work:

link_to "Profile", profile_path(@profile.id, param1: 'value1', param2: 'value2'), method: :post