Came across this blog post recently and wanted to Incorporate its ideas into my Rails project - URLs should be short, human readable, shareable, and shorten-able. Specifically, I want to learn how to make URLs shorten-able with Rails. The example he gives is https://stackoverflow.com/users/6380/scott-hanselman and https://stackoverflow.com/users/6380 are the same URLs, the text after the ID is ignored and scott-hanselman will be added after navigating to the page. This improves readability and share-ability.
I would like the show action in my resource URLs to auto-add the page's <title> after the ID when navigating to the page but ignore it when the user pastes it into the search bar. This allows for malleable titles.
Example below. All these URLs should bring you to the resource with an ID of '1'
host/resource/1/exciting-blog-post
host/resource/1
host/resource/1/exciting-blog-post.html
host/resource/1/new-title-on-post
Edit:
The biggest difficulty I am having is editing the URL after the user submits it, ie transforming resource/1 to resource/1/name_column.
I have been able to redirect incorrect routes using the following in config/routes.rb - get "/events/:id/*other", to: redirect('events/%{id}')
Ok this was really tricky to figure out, didn't even know I had access to a lot of these parameters before. FriendlyID is not required, and not even capable of solving this issue.
The resource I'm using below is "events".
First edit your config/routes.rb to accept id/other_stuff
Rails.application.routes.draw do
resources :events
get "/events/:id/*other" => "events#show" #if any txt is trailing id, also send this route to events#show
end
Next modify event_controller.show to redirect if the URL is incorrect.
def show
#redirect if :name is not seen in the URL
if request.format.html?
name_param = #event.name.parameterize
url = request.original_url
id_end_indx = url.index(#event.id.to_s) + (#event.id.to_s).length + 1 #+1 for '/' character
##all URL txt after id does not match name.parameterize
if url[id_end_indx..-1] != #event.name.parameterize
redirect_to "/events/#{#event.id}/#{name_param}"
end
end
end
This will result in the exact same behavior as the Stack Overflow examples gave in the question.
Related
I am making a website with Ruby on Rails, referencing Airbnb, and I found it difficult to make the following URL structure.
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/767/what-is-the-resolution-center
In this URL, it seems that there is an article resource under help, so 767 is the ID of the article. In addition, after the ID, there is the name of the page in the URL.
scope '/help' do
resources :articles
end
By doing this, I was able to route until this part.
/help/articles/'page_id'
But I have no idea what to do from here.
I generated article model(title:string, content:text), and I am guessing that each article(title and content) is displayed according to the id.
Here's my questions.
How does Airbnb route page_name after the article ID?
In the case that the title and content in the article table are displayed, how do you put hyperlinks or internationalize the contents with I18n?
Also, please tell me if my guess is wrong in the first place, and tell me how Airbnb routes each article.
Thank you.
To tell Rails to accept request under URL like /help/article/767/what-is-the-resolution-center is actually very easy when you do use get instead of nested resources:
get '/help/article/:id/:slug', to: 'help_atricles#show', as: 'help_article'
Given the above URL, Rails would extract the id and slug from the URL and route the request to the show method of a HelpArticlesController.
That controller method could be as simple as:
def show
#article = HelpArticle.find(params[:id])
end
And to build such URLs you can use the help_article_path helper method defined by the as: 'help_article' part:
<%= link_to(
#article.title,
help_article_path(
id: #article.id,
slug: #article.title.parameterize
)
) %>
Read more about this routing method in the Rails Guides
Btw. I didn't use the slug part of the URL because it feels to me like it makes the URL look nicer and might be SEO relevant, but it feels useless from the application's point of view. You might want to use the slug part to identify the locale in which the article should be shown if you do not want to use the browser's locale setting.
I have a site with the basic rails scaffold, when a user deletes a record the default action is to redirect to the home page. However I would like it to return to the list the user was just looking at.
Right now I'm using request.referrer which is technically getting the referral URL but the parameters are not included...
In my rails logs I can see "Started GET /books/book_preview?name=Hunger+Games"
But request.referrer only shows "https://x.x.x.x/books"
I have also tried .original_url and .original_fullpath but those return the path of the current page for the record "/books/HungerGames". I also tried URI(request.referrer).query to at least just get the parameters but that threw an error.
I would like to get the previous path with the parameters like: /books/books_preview?name=Hunger+Games
Also this list is a remote partial that is rendered through JS. You can't see the URL in the browser URL bar only when highlight over it or look in the rails logs. It doesn't even show up in the request when i looked through it using request.inspect.
Thanks in advance for any help! Have been stuck on this all day!
request.referrer
It will give you referral url with query params as well.
You're not getting the query string from the URL, according to this answer (& docs), you need:
request.fullpath #-> book_preview?name=Hunger+Games
--
As an aside, if you're using this as a lists page, it should be okay. However, if you're wanting to pull specific book records, you'd be better using a member route:
#config/routes.rb
scope "/books" do
resources :book_preview, only: :show, param: :name #-> url.com/books/book_preview/:name
end
This would give you the ability to return a specific object for that book, negating any need to hack the request path etc.
I have been programming in Ruby on Rails for a while now, but never really dug deep into routing until recently. After reading a fair amount of documentation and googling, I haven't been able to answer this question.
How do you change a URL after a route is matched? To better explain this, let me set a scenario I'm trying to solve. The root of my website while testing is localhost:3000. My login page is localhost:3000/login. Once logged in though, I want the URL to read localhost:3000 again with no extension. The actual page name is dashboard and my route is as follows currently.
get 'dashboard' => 'user#dashboard'
This only matches when the URL is localhost:3000/dashboard, but I wan't to have cleaner URL like a lot of sites have. How is this achieved with Ruby On Rails? I want to avoid a javascript solutions or anything that is a workaround.
Any help or tips is greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.
I've provided the solution below, but I agree with max that your wanting to make a RESTful URL less meaningful is backwards. You should strive to alias a URL to make it more meaningful (e.g. from site.com/posts/34239482069472/ to site.com/posts/my-post-title).
The URL that appears in the address bar is an instruction to an app. When a user puts "site.com/dashboard" into the address bar, they're instructing the app to make an HTTP request get 'dashboard'. The Controller#action is a set of instructions the app executes when it receives that request. If you're following Rails naming convention then Users#dashboard will retrieve data and then by default render the view template at views/users/dashboard.html.erb. Understand this: you're not changing the URL for a given view, you're changing which view template is rendered by the Controller#action that is set for that url.
This means the Controller#action for your root_url (i.e. your root to: 'controller#action' in config/routes.rb) should render one view template if user is logged in and a different view template if a user is not logged in. Assuming root to: welcome#index, your controller action would look something like this:
app/controllers/welcome_controller.rb
def index
# db queries, logic, set #variables
if session[:user_id]
render "users/dashboard" # app/views/users/dashboard.html.erb
else
render "index" # app/views/welcome/index.html.erb
end
end
Note that if the view template you want to render corresponds to the controller, e.g. users_controller.rb action is rendering a view in views/users, then you only need to give the view name, otherwise you need to give a path (relative to app/views).
Why? /dashboard is a proper RESTful definition of a resource. In REST a route should have the same response independent of state. So having a radically different root page for a logged in user violates REST.
Also your users may want to access the index page as well the dashboard and you would be denying them that possibility.
These kind of URL micro-optimizations do not warrant hacking a bunch of state into your routes definitions.
I want to have a rails route that triggers if the given id is present, but falls back to further route matching if not.
Specifically, I want to have promo codes at the root level of my site. So, you can go to foo.com/save87 or foo.com/xmasspecial, and it'll treat it as a promo code, but if you go to a promo code that's not there (foo.com/badcode), that route will not match and rails will continue down the route list.
In an ideal world, I'd do something like this in my routes.rb file:
get '/:promo_id' => 'promos#show, constraints => lambda { Promo.exists?(promo_id) }
I know that the above code, without the constraints, would work as a catch-all for foo.com/*, and would sorta work if I put it as the last line in the routes file. Unfortunately, that would result in foo.com/badcode a 'promocode not found' error, rather than a normal 'route not found' error.
So, is there a way to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish? This is in Rails 3, for reference.
Edit: To clarify a bit-
I want a wildcard url as described above so that our promocode urls are short and memorable (foo.com/save87 instead of foo.com/promo_codes/save87)
I'd prefer to have the option of having other routes after this one. I may, at some point, need another wildcard url at the root level- for example, if I want vanity urls for another resource in my system. For example, if I sell a dozen varieties of widgets, I might want foo.com/widget_deluxe, foo.com/widget_extreme, etc in addition to my promo code urls. I'd have to make sure that there's no collision between promo codes and widget varieties, but that's easily handled elsewhere.
In an ideal world, I'd do something like this in my routes.rb file:
No way. In Rails World, this functionality should go inside controller.
In controller you can do something like
def show
if Promo.exists?(promo_id)
#do something
else
raise ActionController::RoutingError.new('Not Found')
end
end
Update
With routes, you can do something like this
constraints(lambda { |req| Promo.exists?(req.params["promo_id"]) }) do
get '/:promo_id' => 'promos#show
end
Please keep in mind that this constraints will query the database for every request with a url matching the pattern /:promo_id (e.q. /users, /faq). To avoid unnecessary database queries that decrease your website performance, you should add this rule as far as possible to the end of your routes.rb.
Using this routing logic, every request to your application would do an extra search for a promo code before it moved on to the rest of the routes. I recommend looking at your business case and consider doing a Promo controller. If you must do routes, something like this would work but I would put it at the end so that it goes to your regular routes first.
get '*', to: 'promos#show'
I am trying to do something for hours and I'm stuck with rails routes.
So.. the idea is to have some even more user-friendly urls like for example /Laptops for a category and /Laptops/Apple-MacBook-Air-and-so-on. I should also use such links for simple pages like /MyDummyPage etc.
So my idea was to get the request_url and check if i can find the page myself. But it seems rails is initialising this request class after defining routes and right before calling the controller.
As you can see I am stuck and can't see any possible solution for my problem.
I will be glad if someone can help me.
Thank you in advance.
All the best!
(Whole thing revised)
If you want to allow dynamic matches along with normal restful routes, there are a couple options- (put it at the end of your routes or it will match everything)
match '*raw' => 'dynamic#show'
And in dynamic_controller.rb
def show
parts = params[:raw].split '/'
# do logic here to set all variables used in views
render #resource_or_page
end
You could also use the input in a search function and redirect to the first result of that search. Or return a 404 if there are no results.
def show
results = search_method_here params[:raw].sub('/', ' ')
if results.any?
redirect_to results.first
else
raise ActionController::RoutingError.new 'Not Found'
end
end
Also, for freindlier urls within restful routes, try out this: https://github.com/norman/friendly_id
I think its important to realize that people generally do not manipulate URLs by hand, and its nice to have readable urls, but its more important for them to be clear on what/where they are doing/going.
In response to your comment, I think you are mislead about routing. If you make 2 routes :category and :page, they match the exact same url, except one of them stores it in params[:category] and the other in params[:page]. To differentiate it, you would need to have a different amount of arguments matched like :category/:product or a namespace, or, perhaps, a restful route which specifies the MVC the route routes to.