Possible to Change Rails Routing Convention? - ruby-on-rails

I'm wondering if it's possible to edit the default Rails routing convention to fetch a specific record based on a field that is not the ID?
For instance, instead of retrieving a specific record based on ID, with the verb/url combination:
GET /users/:id
Retrieve a specific record based on username, with the verb/url combination:
GET /users/:username
I don't see why this would be a problem theoretically, as long as usernames were required to be unique, but I'm having trouble understanding how to implement it based on the Rails Routing Guide.
I have gathered that I will need to add a line to my routes.rb file, to define a singular resource, just prior to:
resources :users
However, I'm having trouble understanding the syntax to accomplish this. Any help in understanding this would be greatly appreciated.

Yes it is possible and they are called Non Restful Routes in the rails documentation
A trivial example is doing the below in your routes.rb
get ':users/:show/:username', controller: "users", action: "show"
and in your UsersController you have a show action that looks like this:
def show
if params[:id].present?
#user = User.find(params[:id])
elsif params[:username].present?
#user = User.find_by(username: params[:username])
end
end
This way you support showing by id and username, if you want do disable support for either of them, modify the if clause as you wish

I think you are looking to change the to_param method like so:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
def to_param
"#{id} #{name}".parameterize
end
end
This would give the url as: /user/id-name. If you want to get rid of the id before the name it gets a little more complicated. If you were just to remove it, it will more than likely break since ActiveRecord needs the id first for finds.
To get around this I would suggest using FriendlyId gem: https://github.com/norman/friendly_id
There is also a RailsCast showing how to use Friendly_id but its pretty straight forward.

The routes does not care if it is an ID or username.
It is really how you find it in the controller.
Just in the user show controller:
def show
#user = User.find_by_username params[:id]
end

Related

How to find a devise user by user_id?

So I am currently enrolled in a TreeHouse tutorial for Ruby on Rails but as I follow along I am modifying some things that are being done to my own liking.
However, I have come to a problem that has me scratching my head.
What I would like to do is get the user_id of a user's show page. What the tutorial has done is create a new field for devise, profile_name.
I skipped this step, because i did not want my users to be identified that way. I wanted them to be identified by their "user_id" + "first_name" + "last_name". In doing what the tutorial did, what he achieved was that he created custom routes for each individual user signed up to his site by the use of their unique profile_name. In my case it would be "user_id" + "first_name" + "last_name". If someone could shed some light on this and hopefully also point me to a resource I could potentially learn more on this subject I would really appreciate it.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day! :D
This is what they had in the tutorial.
class ProfileController < ApplicationController
before_filter :authenticate_user!, only: [:show]
def show
#user = User.find_by_profile_name(params[:id])
//#user = User.find_by_user_id(params[:id]) //my code that I thought would work
if #user
#statuses = #user.statuses.all
render action: :show
else
render file: 'public/404', status: 404, formats: [:html]
end
end
end
ROUTES FILE
Rails.application.routes.draw do
get '/:id', to: 'profile#show'
You'll probably need to have slashes to separate your id/first_name/last_name params. The reason being is that let's say someone's identifier ends up as 105johnsmith - well, how do you know that their first name hasn't been entered as 5joh, and their last name as nsmith, leaving their id as 10, rather than 105? You don't.
However, if you want to assume that the first digits of the identifier are in fact the user's id, then you just need to take whatever's in params[:id] and extract the integer id from the string.
So you'd have code like:
id = params[:id].scan(/\d+/).first
#user = User.find_by_profile_name(id)
If you wanted to change the name of your :id parameter, you could, but it's not required in order for it to work.
And if you wanted to go down the (more sensible) path of putting slashes between the parameters (for a url like /105/john/smith, or even /105/johnsmith) then you'd just change your routes to be either:
get '/:id/:first_name/:last_name', to: 'profile#show' # maps /105/john/smith
# or
get '/:id/:full_name', to: 'profile#show' # maps /105/johnsmith
And you could then leave the code in your controller exactly the same.
To find User ID out of the box:
In Users Show Controller: #user = User.find(params[:id])
In USERS SHOW.HTML.ERB: <p><%- #user.id %><p>

Params and selecting the right one

I've got this helper method in my application controller:
def current_team
#current_team ||= Team.find(params[:team_id])
end
Problem is, it works for urls of the format:
/teams/20/members/11
but it doesn't work for:
/teams/20
In order to get it to work for those, I have to change :team_id to be :id.
How can I tidy it up so it 'just works'?
Thanks!
Set instance variables (#current_team) in controllers, never in helpers. It's not what helpers are for.
If you follow this advice, you will naturally use params[:id] in TeamsController, but params[:team_id] in MembersController.
(Some people even go on to say that you shouldn't use helpers at all. For facilitating presentation (custom links, buttons, tables, etc), they propose to use Presenter pattern. But you don't have to listen to them. :))
It is not the best thing to do, but to accomplish that you can do the following:
def current_team
#current_team ||= Team.find(params[:team_id].presence || params[:id])
end
Documentation about the Object.presence method:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/Object.html#method-i-presence
#SergioTulentsev is right, you shall not set instance variables in helpers, only in controllers.
I'm assuming you have other resources besides just Team. Rails is going to use the :id param for all of your resources. You will need to look into customizing the routes for your teams#show action. Easier in Rails 4 than in Rails 3.
Have a look at this post for the gory details: Change the name of the :id parameter in Routing resources for Rails
I wouldn't do params[:team_id] || params[:id], because of course in some controller contexts you'd get an id parameter that represents the id for something other than a Team. Assuming that the /teams/:id route is handled by the TeamsController, then you could do the following (to keep your method in ApplicationController and avoid repeating yourself in different controllers):
def current_team
id = controller_name == "teams" ? params[:id] : params[:team_id]
#current_team ||= Team.find(id)
end
Alternatively, you could change your routes so that the url to show a Team is /teams/:team_id and leave your helper as-is, but that would go against the grain of Rails routing conventions.

StackOverflow Style Routes with Smart Redirects

StackOverflow seems to have this style of routes for questions:
/questions/:id/*slug
Which is easy enough to achieve, both in routes and to_param.
However, StackOverflow seems to also redirect to that path when just an ID is passed.
Example:
stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333
redirects to:
stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is-subtracting-these-two-times-in-1927-giving-a-strange-result/
Same goes for any variation of the slug
stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/some-random-stuff
Will still redirect to the same URL.
My question is: Is this type of redirection typically handled in the controller (comparing the request to the route) or is there a way to do this in routes.rb?
The reason I wouldn't think this possible in the routes.rb file is that typically, you don't have access to the object (so you couldn't get the slug based off the ID, right?)
For anyone interested, Rails 3.2.13 and also using FriendlyID
Ok, so I think I've got this.
I was looking into doing something with middleware, but then decided that's probably not the place for this type of functionality (since we need to access ActiveRecord).
So I ended up building a service object, known as a PathCheck. The service looks like this:
class PathCheck
def initialize(model, request)
#model = model
#request = request
end
# Says if we are already where we need to be
# /:id/*slug
def at_proper_path?
#request.fullpath == proper_path
end
# Returns what the proper path is
def proper_path
Rails.application.routes.url_helpers.send(path_name, #model)
end
private
def path_name
return "edit_#{model_lowercase_name}_path" if #request.filtered_parameters["action"] == "edit"
"#{model_lowercase_name}_path"
end
def model_lowercase_name
#model.class.name.underscore
end
end
This is easy enough to implement into my controller:
def show
#post = Post.find params[:post_id] || params[:id]
check_path
end
private
def check_path
path_check = PathCheck.new #post, request
redirect_to path_check.proper_path if !path_check.at_proper_path?
end
My || in my find method is because in order to maintain resourceful routes, I did something like...
resources :posts do
get '*id' => 'posts#show'
end
Which will make a routes like: /posts/:post_id/*id on top of /posts/:id
This way, the numeric id is primarily used to look up the record, if available. This allows us to loosely match /posts/12345/not-the-right-slug to be redirected to /posts/12345/the-right-slug
The service is written in a universal fashion, so I can use it in any resourceful controller. I have't found a way to break it yet, but I'm open to correction.
Resources
Railscast #398: Service Objects by Ryan Bates
This Helpful Tweet by Jared Fine

How to implement "short" nested vanity urls in rails?

I understand how to create a vanity URL in Rails in order to translate
http://mysite.com/forum/1 into http://mysite.com/some-forum-name
But I'd like to take it a step further and get the following working (if it is possible at all):
Instead of:
http://mysite.com/forum/1/board/99/thread/321
I'd like in the first step to get to something like this: http://mysite.com/1/99/321
and ultimately have it like http://mysite.com/some-forum-name/some-board-name/this-is-the-thread-subject.
Is this possible?
To have this work "nicely" with the Rails URL helpers you have to override to_param in your model:
def to_param
permalink
end
Where permalink is generated by perhaps a before_save
before_save :set_permalink
def set_permalink
self.permalink = title.parameterize
end
The reason you create a permalink is because, eventually, maybe, potentially, you'll have a title that is not URL friendly. That is where parameterize comes in.
Now, as for finding those posts based on what permalink is you can either go the easy route or the hard route.
Easy route
Define to_param slightly differently:
def to_param
id.to_s + permalink
end
Continue using Forum.find(params[:id]) where params[:id] would be something such as 1-my-awesome-forum. Why does this still work? Well, Rails will call to_i on the argument passed to find, and calling to_i on that string will return simply 1.
Hard route
Leave to_param the same. Resort to using find_by_permalink in your controllers, using params[:id] which is passed in form the routes:
Model.find_by_permalink(params[:id])
Now for the fun part
Now you want to take the resource out of the URL. Well, it's a Sisyphean approach. Sure you could stop using the routing helpers Ruby on Rails provides such as map.resources and define them using map.connect but is it really worth that much gain? What "special super powers" does it grant you? None, I'm afraid.
But still if you wanted to do that, here's a great place to start from:
get ':forum_id/:board_id/:topic_id', :to => "topics#show", :as => "forum_board_topic"
Take a look at the Rails Routing from the Outside In guide.
maybe try something like
map.my_thread ':forum_id/:board_od/:thread_id.:format', :controller => 'threads', :action => 'show'
And then in your controller have
#forum = Forum.find(params[:forum_id])
#board = #forum.find(params[:board_id])
#thread = #board.find(params[:thread_id])
Notice that you can have that model_id be anything (the name in this case)
In your view, you can use
<%= link_to my_thread_path(#forum, #board, #thread) %>
I hope this helps

Permalinks with Ruby on Rails (dynamic routes)

I am currently developing a blogging system with Ruby on Rails and want the user to define his "permalinks" for static pages or blog posts, meaning:
the user should be able to set the page name, eg. "test-article" (that should be available via /posts/test-article) - how would I realize this in the rails applications and the routing file?
for user-friendly permalinks you can use gem 'has_permalink'. For more details http://haspermalink.org
Modifying the to_param method in the Model indeed is required/convenient, like the others said already:
def to_param
pagename.parameterize
end
But in order to find the posts you also need to change the Controller, since the default Post.find methods searches for ID and not pagename. For the show action you'd need something like this:
def show
#post = Post.where(:pagename => params[:id]).first
end
Same goes for the other action methods.
You routing rules can stay the same as for regular routes with an ID number.
I personally prefer to do it this way:
Put the following in your Post model (stick it at the bottom before the closing 'end' tag)
def to_param
permalink
end
def permalink
"#{id}-#{title.parameterize}"
end
That's it. You don't need to change any of the find_by methods. This gives you URL's of the form "123-title-of-post".
You can use the friendly_id gem. There are no special controller changes required. Simple add an attribute for example slug to your model..for more details check out the github repo of the gem.
The #63 and #117 episodes of railscasts might help you. Also check out the resources there.
You should have seolink or permalink attribute in pages' or posts' objects. Then you'd just use to_param method for your post or page model that would return that attribute.
to_param method is used in *_path methods when you pass them an object.
So if your post has title "foo bar" and seolink "baz-quux", you define a to_param method in model like this:
def to_param
seolink
end
Then when you do something like post_path(#post) you'll get the /posts/baz-quux or any other relevant url that you have configured in config/routes.rb file (my example applies to resourceful urls). In the show action of your controller you'll just have to find_by_seolink instead of find[_by_id].

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