What is the difference between _url and _path while using the routes in rails
I had the same question and I wrote a small post about this in my blog
The reason is summarized here (I found this on a forum):
*_path are for views because ahrefs are implicitly linked to the current URL. So it’d be a waste of bytes to repeat it over and over. In the controller, though, *_url is needed for redirect_to because the HTTP specification mandates that the Location: header in 3xx redirects is a complete URL.
Here is another explanation which says it depends on whether we need to use an absolute URI when linking to an SSL site from a non-SSL site, and vice versa.
What I have read so far, doesn't suggest that any of them is more secure than the other. It really comes down to what is the "proper" usage.
An example of the difference for a resource called "user":
users_url # => http://localhost:3000/usersusers_path # => /users