ruby on rails - Named routes _path vs _url

Question

Rails provides named routes.

Routes helper can be called using path or url

eg from docs:

# and provide these named routes
root_url   # => 'http://www.example.com/'
root_path  # => '/'

frankly speaking I have never used *_url helper yet , I was able to get things working using *_path.

I was bit confused what is the purpose of these two different helpers?

how are they different from one another?

some real examples with explanations when to use what would be great.

Answer 1

_path helpers provide a site-root-relative path. You should probably use this most of the time.

_url helpers provide an absolute path, including protocol and server name. I've found that I mainly use these in emails when creating links to the app on the server. They should mainly be used when providing links for external use. (Think email links, RSS, and things like the copy and paste URL field under a YouTube video's "Share" section.)