rails 3 redirect_to pass params to a named route - ruby

Question

I am not finding much info on how to do this even though there are lots of suggestions on how to pass params to a redirect using hashs like this redirect_to
:action => 'something', :controller => 'something'
in my app I have the following in the routes file
match 'profile' => 'User#show'
my show action loos like this
def show
#user = User.find(params[:user])
#title = #user.first_name
end
the redirect happens in the same user controller like this
def register
#title = "Registration"
#user = User.new(params[:user])
if #user.save
redirect_to '/profile'
end
end
The question is in the register action when I redirect_to how do I pass along the params so I can grab that user from the database or better yet ... I already have a user variable so how do I pass along the user object to the show action?
-matthew

Answer 1

If you're doing a redirect, Rails will actually send a 302 Moved response with a URL to the browser and the browser will send another request to that URL. So you cannot "pass the user object" as in Ruby, you can only pass some url encoded parameters.
In this case you would probably want to change your routing definition to:
match 'profile/:id' => 'User#show'
and then redirect like this:
redirect_to "/profile/#{#user.id}"

Answer 2

First off, I'd name your route, to make using it easier:
match '/profile/:id' => 'users#show', :as => :profile
You would then redirect to it, like so:
redirect_to profile_path(#user) # might have to use profile_path(:id => #user.id)
Then to pull the user from the database:
def show
#user = User.find(params[:id]) # :id comes from the route '/profile/:id'
...
end
As an aside, if you use something like Devise for authentication, it provides you with a current_user method, and therefore you wont need to pass around the user's id:
match '/profile' => 'users#show', :as => :profile
redirect_to profile_path
def show
#user = current_user
end