I want to accept URLs for my objects that contain an element that is not used, but which would be nice for SEO reasons. For example, I want to accept an url like:
http://localhost:3000/people/USA/123-joe-schmoe
.. where the "/USA" bit has no significance at all, other than signaling to users and search engines that this person resides in the USA.
I've tried setting up my rule using globbing, as well as for example doing something like
match "people/:whatever/:id" => "people#show", :constraints => {:id => /\d+-.*/}, :as => "person"
But this results in an attempt to route to :controller => people, :action => "show", :whatever => #<Person id: 123 ...> which fails.
Is it possible to have the routing ignore the :whatever part and pass in my :id in stead?
You can try a widcard match instead
match "people/*/:id => "doctors#show", :constraints=> {:id=>/\d+=.*/}, :as=>"person"
Related
Right now I am finding routing and URL constructing within rails to be semi-confusing. I have currently matched the following for tags that are passed in when displaying/filtering data.
match '/posts/standard/' => 'posts#standard'
match '/posts/standard/:tags' => 'posts#standard', :as => :post_tag
match '/posts/standard/:tags' => redirect { |params| "/posts/standard/#{params[:tags].gsub(' ', '+')}" }, :tags => /.+/
However, now I want to add a 'skill' parameter that can only take one state; however, I am very confused by how I want to construct this within my URL. I cannot simply have...
match '/posts/standard/:tags/:skill' => 'posts#standard', as => post_tag, as: => post_skill
So, I am very confused by this at this point, does Rails offer any type of help for constructing URL's?
One way is to just keep your main route
match '/posts/standard/:tags' => 'posts#standard', :as => :post_tag
and handle the additional URL params as params. The url would look like:
/posts/standard/1?skill=something
and it is easy enough to inject the additional params, such as by
link_to post_tag_path(:skill=> 'something')
and your controller would then do
def standard
if params[:skill] == 'something'
...
else
...
end
end
Also, not sure about this, but your first line in your routes 'match '/posts/standard/' => 'posts#standard' may catch all of your routes since there is a match. If this is the case, simply move it to after the first line.
I would like to do just a little bit of extra logic in rotues.rb, that probably doesn't belong there, but it seems to make the most sense to me.
I have two conflicting routes. To be primitive:
match '/videos/:browseby' => 'videos#browse', :as => "browse_by"
Where :browseby is looking for a string, such as "Tags", to browse videos by tags.
However, (and most probably saw this coming) I also have my basic show resource (again in primitive form):
match '/videos/:id' => 'videos#show', :as => "video"
Where :id is looking for the integer for the video ID.
Is there a way to add a small bit of logic such as...
match '/videos/:id' => 'videos#show', :as => "video", :format(:id) => :integer
(Which is my hypothetical rails syntax, to help show what I'm looking for.)
I know I can munch this in the Controller level, but it makes more sense to me to handle it at the route level.
You could try using :constraints and a regex:
match '/videos/:id' => 'videos#show', :as => "video", :constraints => { :id => /\d/ }
match '/videos/:browseby' => 'videos#browse', :as => "browse_by"
You'll also want to make sure the looser :browseby version comes after the :id version. Note that regex constraints are implicitly anchored at the beginning so that would work as long as your :browseby values didn't start with a number.
If you have tags that do start with numbers then you could use an object for the constraint and then you could include anchors in your regex:
class VideoIdsOnly
def matches?(request)
request.path =~ %r{\A/videos/\d+\z}
end
end
match '/videos/:id' => 'video#show', :as => "video", :constraints => VideoIdsOnly.new
match '/videos/:browseby' => 'videos#browse', :as => "browse_by"
If I have this route (in routes.rb):
match 'posts', :to => 'posts#index'
It will show and match the following routes:
# Case 1: non nested hash params
posts_path(:search => 'the', :category => 'old-school')
#=> "/posts?search=the&category=old-school"
# Case 2: nested hash params
posts_path(:filter => {:search => 'the', :category => 'old-school'})
#=> "/posts?filter[search]=the&filter[category]=old-school"
If I want to make the category param part of the main URL, I could do this for the Case 1.
match 'posts(/:category)', :to => 'posts#index'
that will show and match the following routes:
# Case 1: non nested hash params
posts_path(:search => 'the', :category => 'old-school')
#=> "/posts/old-school?search=the"
But how could I do the same if the param is nested (Case 2)?
I would expect the next route definition:
match 'posts(/:filter[category])', :to => 'posts#index'
to work this way:
# Case 2: nested hash params
posts_path(:filter => {:search => 'the', :category => 'old-school'})
#=> "/posts/old-school?filter[search]=the"
But it does not work.
I found this same question in two places with no righ answer:
how-to-specify-nested-parameters-in-the-routes
how-to-accept-hash-parameters-in-routes
The Rails Guides don't specify anthing about this.
Should I assume that this can not be done in rails? really?
you could just make two different routes instead
match 'posts', :to => 'posts#index'
match 'posts/:category', :to => 'posts#index'
The next route will not work as you intended it.
match 'posts(:filter[category])', :to => 'posts#index'
The :filter is just a place holder for either the first argument thats passed into the url helper or the value for the key :filter in a has that is passed in. Any expressions in the route string will not be evaluated.
I guess the answer to your question is that you cannot do this in rails. I would suggest to you though that you do this in another way. It is very helpful in rails to follow the convention and make things easier on yourself.
Looks like you are doing three things here. The base post routes
match 'posts', :to => 'posts#index'
A route that has the category nested in it. Most likely to give the user a better url
match 'posts/:category', :to => 'posts#index'
And a search url which can be the same as the first, or to make your action cleaner, a different one
match 'posts/search', :to => 'posts#search'
There is really no reason I can think of to complicate the routes in the way your are suggesting. A search query url doesn't look nice anyways so why bother handling two urls for searches. Just one will do.
You should definitely take a look at running
rake routes
as this will tell you exactly what you have defined in your routes file. You can also set up routing tests to ensure your custom routes are performing correctly.
Your example does not work (as you indicated)
# Case 2: nested hash params
posts_path(:filter => {:search => 'the', :category => 'old-school'})
#=> "/posts/old-school?filter[search]=the"
But what you should be looking for is this
posts_path(:filter => {:search => 'the', :category => 'old-school'})
#=> "/posts?filter[search]=the&filter[category]=old-school"
This is ok to do it this way.
If you want to keep posts/:category just use this for navigation only, not for search.
Hope that helps
I am trying to get something like this working on my Rails app:
match '/:language', :to => 'posts#search_result'
match '/:tag', :to => 'posts#search_result'
match '/:language/:tag', :to => 'posts#search_result'
I am using this search_result action to filter some posts depending of the language and the tag.
The problem is that sometimes :tag will be nil or :language will be nil; so i have these 3 possibilities when calling the action:
<%=link_to "Spanish", {:controller => 'posts', :action => 'search_result', :language => "spanish"} %>
<%= link_to "Spanish", {:controller => 'posts', :action => 'search_result', :language => "spanish", :tag => #tag} %>
<%=link_to "#{tag.name}", {:controller => 'posts', :action => 'search_result', :tag => #tag} %>
And I am expection to have URLs like:
/spanish (for the first case)
/spanish/rails (where rails is a tag, for the second case)
/rails (for the third case)
But right now i am getting the rigth thing for the first and third case, but for the second case i am getting:
/spanish?tag=rails
or again /spanish (depending on if i had selected a tag first or a language first).
I hope i explained myself right. Any idea??. thanks!.
The router cannot tell the difference between a :language and a :tag.
Just because your routes say "language" and "tag" when you are constructing your code in the view.. remember that in the html this has been translated into just plain ole URLs eg /spanish or /rails
the route then has to be figured out from this URL.
Now as I said, the router can't tell that a particular word is a language or a tag... and the plain-ole-URL doesn't have the word "tag" or "language" in it anymore... so your two routes here:
match '/:language', :to => 'posts#search_result'
match '/:tag', :to => 'posts#search_result'
are both the same kind of URL
Just a single token after the slash. Here are some examples that will match that route:
/greek
/spanish
/rails
/urdu
/whatever
They will all match the first route that matches on "a single token after a slash"... which means your router will match all of them to the "language" route and will never ever match the "/:tag" route, because it's already matched on the route above.
he he: it's all greek to the router ;)
Edit:
Hi, this is helping me a lot to understand how routing works.. but still i can't see it clear. I understand what you said, and so basically i understand i should do something like match '/tags/:tag to at least only route to posts#search_result the URLS starting by /tag .. what would be a solution??
yes, "/tags/:tag" would be clear and unambiguous, but if you want it to truly flexible in tag vs language you would be better served by the simple:
match '/posts/search', :to => 'posts#search_result'
which can use any of your link_to examples above to generate eg:
/posts/search?tag=rails
/posts/search?language=spanish
/posts/search?language=spanish&tag=rails
It's also far more clear what is being passed and why.
The description of the third URL is "I'm searching for a set of posts which have language = spanish and tag = rails"
Your URL should reflect the resource (which in this case is a set of posts) everything else is better done as query params.
Instead of defining /:language and /:language/:tag separately, define them together, with /:tag as an optional URI element.
match '/:language(/:tag)', :to => 'posts#search_result'
I believe routes are matched (and URIs generated from them) in the order that the routes are defined. You defined /:lang before you defined /:lang/:tag, so it matched /:lang and made :tag a GET parameter. I suppose you could optimize the ordering of your definitions, but I believe using the above syntax is the preferred method.
I have a rails route that is based on two conditions, that the domain and subdomain are a specific value. The problem is that there are multiple possible values for subdomain to work, but I can't seem to be able to pass them as an array or hash.
map.with_options(:conditions => {:domain => AppConfig['base_domain'], :subdomain => 'www'..'www3'}) do |signup|
signup.plans '/signup', :controller => 'accounts', :action => 'plans'
...[truncated]...
end
The above example works as accepting www, www1, www2 & www3 as a value for the subdomain. However, that doesn't really solve my needs. I need to be able to accept a value of '' (nothing), 'www' and 'www2' so I tried something to the extend of:
map.with_options(:conditions => {:domain => AppConfig['base_domain'], :subdomain => ['','www','www2']}) do |signup|
That's similar to how you would set it up in ActiveRecord but it doesn't seem to be the same for routes.
Does anybody know now I can specify three values that aren't sequential?
If you can render it as a regular expression, you can use it as a condition. Converting an array to a regular expression is quite easy:
:subdomain => Regexp.new(%w[ www www3 ].collect { |p| Regexp.escape(p) }.join('|'))
Since you're just dealing with a simple pattern anyway, why not express it as this?
:subdomain => /www\d*/
It is important to note that the regular expressions used by routes are not supposed to be anchored using ^ or $ like you usually would. They must match completely to be valid, and partial matches are ignored.