Server 400 error when beautifying URLs within the Yii Framework - url

Question

so, using urlManager i've been able to get to this point:
'people/<id:\d+>/<last:.*?>/<name:.*?>'=>'person/view',
which generates this: http://foo.com/people/3/smith/john
I want to eliminate the ID number, which in this case is "3"
I tried using this:
'people/<last:.*?>/<name:.*?>'=>'person/view', //makes sense right?
however, when i try to navigate to http://foo.com/people/smith/john , I get a server 400 error.
What gives? Should I try modifying the .htaccess file instead?
As requested here is my entire urlManager component:
'urlManager'=>array(
'urlFormat'=>'path',
'showScriptName'=>false,
'rules'=>array(
'about' => array('site/page', 'defaultParams' => array('view' => 'about')),
'contact'=>'site/contact',
'login' =>'site/login',
'/'=>'site/index',
'people/<last:.*?>/<name:.*?>'=>'person/view',
'<controller:\w+>/<action:\w+>/<id:\d+>'=>'<controller>/<action>',
'<controller:\w+>/<action:\w+>'=>'<controller>/<action>',
),
),
Here is my PersonController.php file:
public function actionView()
{
$person=$this->loadModel();
$this->render('view',array(
'model'=>$person,
));
}
private $_model;
public function loadModel()
{
if($this->_model===null)
{
if(isset($_GET['last']))
{
$this->_model=Person::model()->findByPk($_GET['id']);
}
if($this->_model===null)
throw new CHttpException(404,'The requested page does not exist.');
}
return $this->_model;
}

Answer 1

Your view action needs to accept the names and do a find by the attributes instead of using loadModel, which requires the ID:
public function actionView($last, $name)
{
$person = Person::model()->find(
'name=":name" AND last=":last"',
array(':name'=>$name, ':last'=>$last)
);
if($person === null) throw new CHttpException(404);
$this->render('view',array(
'model'=>$person,
));
}
Do note that your request will not support multiple people with same first and last names!

Answer 2

You probably need a rewrite condition for URLs so requests are still routed back to index.php.
check out this guide: http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/topics.url#user-friendly-urls

Answer 3

look at the actionView of the PersonController
public function actionView($id,...)
{
}
So the view action must need an $id parameter for it to work. Otherwise it throws a 400 bad request error. In your modified url rule the only parameters specified are $last and $name. The solution is to remove the $id parameter to actionView() if it is not used inside actionView. Otherwise you have to change function logic for determining the required person from $last and $name instead of $id