Rails routes on resources support member routing as well as collection routing. Member routes act on a member of the resource. Collection routes acts on resources in general.

Member Routes

Member routes can be defined for actions that are performed on a member of the resource.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say we have a post resource and we need an ability to archive a post. To define routes to achive the functionality above, we will use member routes as given below.

resource :posts do
  post :archive, on: :member
end

This will generate a route on a member of post resource to archive a post. We can print routes defined by rails using command rails routes.

archive_post POST       /posts/:id/archive(.:format)                                                   /posts#archive

As we can see from the rails routes output above, it has created a route that accepts :id parameter and call archive action on posts controller.

Collection Routes

Collection routes can be defined for actions that are performed on collection of the resource. Taking same example as above, searching a particular post is an action that is performed on collection of posts.

Thus, it needs to be defined on posts resource as a collection.

resource :posts do
  get :search, on: :collection
end

This will generate a route as given below.

search_posts GET       /posts/search(.:format)                                                   /posts#search

As we can see, collection routes don’t take any :id parameter in input. It just acts on an entire collection of posts resource.

Define multiple member / collection routes together

If we want to define multiple member or collection routes for a resource, then we can use block to define all together.

resource :posts do
  member do
    post :archive
    get :inactivate
  end

  collection do
    get :search
    post :upload
  end
end

References

• Rails Routes
• Member routes
• Collection routes