gistfile1.txt

class PagesController < ApplicationController
  def home
    @title = "Home"
    puts flash[:notice]
    @subscription = Subscription.new
    @announcements = Announcement.find(:all, :order => 'updated_at DESC')
  end
end

home.html.erb contains:
        <%= form_for(@subscription) do |f| %>
          <% if @subscription.errors.any? %>
            <div id="error_explanation">
              Please fix the following <%= pluralize(@subscription.errors.count, "error") %>:
              <ul>
              <% @subscription.errors.full_messages.each do |msg| %>
                <li><%= msg %></li>
              <% end %>
              </ul>
            </div>
          <% end %>

          <div>
            <%= f.label :name %><br />
            <%= f.text_field :name, :id => "newsletter_email"%>
          </div>
          <div>
            <%= f.label :email %><br />
            <%= f.text_field :email, :id => "newsletter_email" %>
          </div>
          <div>
            <%= f.submit %>
          </div>
        <% end %>


class SubscriptionsController < ApplicationController
  def create
    session[:subscription] = nil
    @subscription = Subscription.new(params[:subscription])
      if @subscription.save
        puts "successful save"
        redirect_to home_path
      else
        puts "unsuccessful save"
        render root_path
      end
    #end
  end
end

This all works great other than that @announcements from pages#home is nil the second time around...

So I didn't figure it out completely. What I ended up doing was adding another action to the pages controller called save_subscription that just does an @subscription load and save. Doing it this way may not be perfectly RESTful, but it preserved my local variables and got me what I needed. Still not sure if it's the best way to do it but it worked.