Rails 4 Route Parameters Defined by Keywords - ruby-on-rails

Question

We're trying to set up rails routes with the parameters separated by more then just forward-slash symbols.
As an example:
someexample.com/SOME-ITEM-for-sale/SOME-PLACE
For the following path we'd like to extract SOME-ITEM and SOME-PLACE strings as parameters whilst identifying which controller to run it all against with the "-for-sale/" part.
I've been playing with variations on :constraints => {:item => /[^\/]+/} constructs but without any success. Am I looking in the right place? Thanks!
UPDATE
In the end I went with this solution:
get ':type/*place' => 'places#index', as: :place , :constraints => {:type => /[^\/]+-for-sale/}
And then recovered the full "SOME-ITEM-for-sale" sting for parsing in the controller using
params[:type]
Hope that helps someone!

Answer 1

friendly_id is what you want:
#Gemfile
gem 'friendly_id', '~> 5.1.0'
$ rails generate friendly_id
$ rails generate scaffold item name:string slug:string:uniq
$ rake db:migrate
#app/models/item.rb
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
extend FriendlyId
friendly_id :name, use: [:slugged, :finders]
end
The above will give you a slug column, which FriendlyId will look up any requests you send to the app:
#config/routes.rb
resources :items, path: "" do
resources :places, path: "" #-> url.com/:item_id/:id
end
Although the params will still be id (unless you use the param option of resources, but FriendlyId will override both your routes and model to use the slug instead:
<%= link_to "Item Place", items_place_path(#item, #place) %> #-> url.com/item-name-information/place-name-information
Update
If you wanted to have a "dynamic" routing structure, you'll be able to use the following (this requires the history module of FriendlyId):
#config/routes.rb
#...
get '/:item_id/:place_id', to: SlugDispatcher.new(self), as: :item #-> this has to go at the bottom
#lib/slug_dispatcher.rb
class SlugDispatcher
#http://blog.arkency.com/2014/01/short-urls-for-every-route-in-your-rails-app/
##########################################
#Init
def initialize(router)
#router = router
end
#Env
def call(env)
id = env["action_dispatch.request.path_parameters"][:item_id]
slug = Slug.find_by slug: id
if slug
strategy(slug).call(#router, env)
else
raise ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
end
end
##########################################
private
#Strategy
def strategy(url)
Render.new(url)
end
####################
#Render
class Render
def initialize(url)
#url = url
end
def call(router, env)
item = #url.sluggable_type.constantize.find #url.sluggable_id
controller = (#url.sluggable_type.downcase.pluralize + "_controller").classify.constantize
action = "show"
controller.action(action).call(env)
end
end
####################
end
This won't work out the box (we haven't adapted it for nested routes yet), but will provide you the ability to route to the appropriate controllers.

Answer 2

In the end we went with this solution:
get ':type/*place' => 'places#index', as: :place , :constraints => {:type => /[^\/]+-for-sale/}
The router command only gets activated if the :type parameter contains "-for-sale" in the string
And then we recovered the full "SOME-ITEM-for-sale" sting for parsing in the controller using
params[:type]
Hope that helps someone!