Simplifying RESTful urls

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi, If I am making an application that has a programmes model which has many episodes, and use nested resourses like so:

map.resources :programmes do |programmes|   programmes.resources :episodes end

This then produces urls like so:

/programmes/4/episodes/5

If I then use permalins, I can get them to look like this:

/programmes/simpsons/episodes/bart-the-general

Is there any way of removing the references to the models in the url? So the url would look like:

/simpsons/bart-the-general

Thanks,

DAZ

2

Don't use the built-in RESTful routing. :slight_smile: Or define your own custom routes:

map.connect ':show_name/:episode_id', :controller => 'episodes', :action => 'show'

I'm not sure that's a valid route, but it would look something like that. In theory, that would minimize the amount of code you'd need to change in your controllers.

--Jeremy

3

Hi --

Hi, If I am making an application that has a programmes model which has many episodes, and use nested resourses like so:

map.resources :programmes do |programmes|   programmes.resources :episodes end

This then produces urls like so:

/programmes/4/episodes/5

If I then use permalins, I can get them to look like this:

/programmes/simpsons/episodes/bart-the-general

Is there any way of removing the references to the models in the url? So the url would look like:

/simpsons/bart-the-general

Don't use the built-in RESTful routing. :slight_smile: Or define your own custom routes:

map.connect ':show_name/:episode_id', :controller => 'episodes', :action => 'show'

I'm not sure that's a valid route, but it would look something like that. In theory, that would minimize the amount of code you'd need to change in your controllers.

It's valid route, but it's a bit "greedy", in the sense that if you also had:

   map.connect ':actor_name/:movie_id'

or something, you'd have two ':wildcard/:wildcard' routes, of which the first to be defined would "win" for all 'x/y' URLs. This may or may not become a problem in a given application, but I've found that it does tend to become one :slight_smile:

You could tweak it with regex matching for the various wildcards, if that's appropriate.

David

4

Not only that, but the routes that include the resource names might be very handy with respect to SEO. That is, you might get higher on a list for someone searching for a "Simpsons episode..." if your url includes both.

If using the name, rather than the id, is something that you can commit to as a universal design decision for your urls then there's a pretty easy way to make the pretty urls without changing the routing. ActiveRecord objects make use of the 'to_param' method when they are used as parameters to a method call. By default they return the record id. That's why the call:

episode_path(@simpsons, @bart_the_general)

comes out like /programmes/4/episodes/5

If you simply override the method then you can use the same routing but the names instead:

class Programme   ...   def to_param     self.name.dasherize   end end

class Episode   ...   def to_param     self.name.dasherize   end end

(Having written that twice I see a refactoring coming on... :slight_smile:

Now your call to episode_path should produce:

/programmes/simpsons/episode/bart-the-general

The remaining work to be done is to update your controllers, making them capable of finding the objects based on the dasherized name.

HTH, AndyV

5

I m looking for the same...

6

Naresh Rana wrote:

I m looking for the same...

/domain/action/id/title

i want to make my url look likie this,

/domain/action/title