Rails has a nice section on naming routes and actions.

Route	File	Used to show
/photos	index	List of photos
/photos/new	new	Form for creating new photo
/photos/:id	show	Show photo
/photos/:id/edit	edit	Form for editing photo
/photos/:id/delete	delete	Form for deleting photo

But this doesn’t cover multi-step flows, so I’ll note here the way I do it.

(Note: I’ll focus on the GETs becuase all the POSTs should be to the same url with a redirect.)

Creating a profile #

So let’s say you need to create your profile which is made up of your name and email address just to keep things simple enough to demonstrate.

Route	File path	Used to show
/profile/new	profile/new/name	Form asking for first and last name
/profile/new/email-address	profile/new/email-address	Form asking for email address
/profile/new/check-answers	profile/new/check-answers	Check answers page
/profile/new/confirmation	profile/new/confirmation	Confirmation page

I still use /new to point to the first screen of the flow. But then I’ll sub directories to identify the additional steps.

Edit your email address #

Now, let’s say you want to edit your email address which is part of your profile.

Route	File path	Used to show
/profile/edit-email	profile/edit-email/current-email-address	Form asking for current address
/profile/edit-email/new-email-address	profile/edit-email/new-email-address	Form asking for new address
/profile/edit-email/check-answers	profile/edit-email/check-answers	Check answers page
/profile/edit-email/confirmation	profile/edit-email/confirmation	Confirmation page

Instead of /edit I’m using /edit-email to be specific about what part of the profile is being edited.

And again the first screen is just the intended action with sub directories for the additional steps.

(Note: if you were editing an item in a collection, just whack the id in the URL. Something like /photos/:id/edit-photo.)