Rails Basics : link_to

It is an almost Rails convention that you should use Ruby code rather than HTML to create links as a mater of style and flexibility via routes.rb

link_to is an example of a Rails function  for html generation and is typically used to add site-wide navigation. For example,

   <%= link_to('Home',       { :action = 'index'}) %> |
   <%= link_to('About Us', { :action ='about'}) %>

You may be interested to note that curly braces are optional in hashes where they are the final argument to a function as follows :-

   <%= link_to('About Us',:action ='about') %>

How does one not link to a page that is currently displayed ?

   <%= link_to_unless_current('Home',       { :action = 'index'}) %> |
   <%= link_to_unless_current('About Us', { :action ='about'}) %>

Are there other related link_to functions ?

Rails adheres to a naming convention whereby a group of related functions have related names, usually of the form original_function_name and original_function_name_with_modification

Let's check to the Rails API via the Rails API Tab in Aptana Radrails or  at http://api.rubyonrails.org and this is what you should find

• link_to
• link_to_if
• link_to_remote
• link_to_unless
• link_to_unless_current
  

How to display an image inside a link_to

<%= link_to image_tag("about.gif", :border=>0), :action => 'about' %>