What is the difference between _url and _path while using the routes in rails

path is relative while url is absolute.

An example of the difference for a resource called "user":

users_url # => http://localhost:3000/users
users_path  # => /users

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.