title: Rendering another Action without changing URL?
body: <p>I have this code in my Rails 3 controller:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def index
      now = Time.now.utc.strftime("%m%d")
      redirect_to :action =&gt; "show", :id =&gt; now
  end
  
  def show
      begin
          @date = Time.parse("12#{params[:id]}") 
          dbdate = params[:id]
      rescue ArgumentError
          @date = Time.now.utc
          dbdate = @date.strftime("%m%d")
      end
  
      @date = @date.strftime("%B %d")
      @events = Event.events_for_date(dbdate)
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So basically index is just a specialized version of show, hence I want it to execute show, render the show.html.erb view - but I do <em>not</em> want to change the URL like redirect_to does.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried this approach:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def index
      now = Time.now.utc.strftime("%m%d")
      params[:id] = now
      show
      render :action =&gt; "show"
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now, this works, but it just smells badly.</p>
  
  <p>I'm new to Ruby and Rails, so I just wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong or if there is a better way to do this?</p>