Rails 4 - change URL from /user/:id to /:username - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a controller pages#dashboard that I have set to be the user_root in my routes.rb
devise_for :users, controllers: { registrations: 'registrations' }
devise_scope :user do
get "/signup" => "devise/registrations#new"
get "/login" => "devise/sessions#new"
get "/logout" => "devise/sessions#destroy"
get "/:id" => "users#dashboard", :as => "user_root", :id => :username
end
I want the URL to be http://my_app.com/current_user_username
I have set the to_param in the user.rb model to:
def to_param
username
end
This works fine when I have a link such as:
<%= link_to "MY ACCOUNT", user_root_path(current_user) %>
But on initial login, the URL is: http://my_app.com/username (explicitly says 'username') instead of http://my_app.com/current_user_username
I have tried setting my to_param to:
def to_param
"#{username}"
end
and have also tried setting my route.rb to:
get "/:id" => "users#dashboard", :as => "user_root", :id => :username, :via => :get
Neither of these have solved the issue.
Environment: Rails 4.2.5, Ruby 2.3.0, Devise gem 3.5.3
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can simply add another route above everything in your routes.rb as:
get "/:username" => "users#dashboard", :as => "user_root"
devise_for :users, controllers: { registrations: 'registrations' }
devise_scope :user do
get "/signup" => "devise/registrations#new"
get "/login" => "devise/sessions#new"
get "/logout" => "devise/sessions#destroy"
get "/:id" => "users#dashboard", :as => "user_root", :id => :username
end
Then you need to find the user by something like this:
#user = User.find_by(username: params[:username])

Answer 2

Just use friendly_id:
#Gemfile
gem 'friendly_id', '~> 5.1'
$ rails generate friendly_id #-> generates initializer
$ rails generate scaffold user name:string slug:string:uniq #-> adds slug column
$ rake db:migrate
#app/models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
extend FriendlyId
friendly_id :username, use: [:slugged, :finders]
end
This will allow you to use the slug / username in lieu of the primary key:
<%= link_to current_user.username, user_path(current_user) #-> <a href="/users/john_jones" %>
You would not have to change your controller code etc for this to work.
--
Your routes can be simplified:
#config/routes.rb
resource :user, path: "", only: :show #-> url.com/:id to users#show
devise_for :users, controllers: { registrations: 'registrations' }, path_names: { sign_in: "login", password: "forgot", confirmation: "confirm", unlock: "unblock", sign_up: "", registration: "signup", sign_out: "logout" }
Whilst I don't know if you can use current_user inside your routes (I'm sure you can but I've not tested), you may wish to use /profile like this:
resource :profile, controller: :users, only: :show
This will send url.com/profile to the users#show action:
#app/controllers/users_controller.rb
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def show
current_user...
end
end

Answer 3

I solved this by adding this to application_controller.rb
def after_sign_in_path_for(resource)
user_root_path(current_user)
end
** This is a Devise specific answer.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer :)

Answer 4

I had a similar problem and made a few changes to routes and it worked here are the sets to do:
under User.rb model
def to_param
username
end
Routes:
resources :users, :path => '/' do
end
Controllers
#user=User.find_by_username(params[:id])
Views
link_to #user.username, #user.username.
Avoid user_path because it would redirect you to www.example.com/users/david
instead follow up this i have noted above
it will www.example.com/david this is better than the first.
hope anyone would be helped.