I have a rails engine that needs to link to a user profile.
So for example for user joe, I want to do something like link to /profile/show/joe
How should the engine access the path to the user profile?
My first instinct was to add a profile_path method to the User model, but this isn't very good because the models don't usually have access to routes and it kind of breaks MVC.
What is the best practice here?
# in your route file
map.connect 'article/:permalink', :controller => 'article', :action => 'view'
# in your views when linking
link_to "View #{article.title}", {:controller => 'designer', :action => 'view', :permalink => article.permalink}
# then in your controller you can use
#article = Article.find_by_permalink(params[:permalink])
Related
i prefer writing the routes of my Rails applications by hand and i now have a situation where i am not sure what is the best way to do things. I want to have a building controller that shows a different page for every building like :
building/town_center
building/sawmill
..
Each of the above should have its own action and view page. I would normally create a route like:
scope :path => '/building', :controller => :building do
get '/view/:slug' => :view, :as => 'view_building'
end
But this only specifies a single action that would then need to call another internal controller method to redirect to the needed template to show. So, i would like your opinion, would you just specify a different route for every building(and action) explicitly ? Or just redirect in the view_building action ?
I think you are after something like this:
match "/building/:name", :to => "buildings#show", :as => :building
Then in your controller action 'show' just render template for the building name:
render :template => 'buildings/#{params[:name]}'
Currently users can access their "profile" through many paths.
localhost:3000/users/current_user
localhost:3000/users/current
localhost:3000/users/id#
How can I make it that they can only get to their "profile" through localhost:3000/users/current_user
One suggestion on the 'what' of your question: instead of the ideal url being localhost:3000/users/current_user I suggest localhost:3000/user or something even more descriptive such as localhost:3000/profile or localhost:3000/account.
Could you include the entries in your routes.rb? Even if Authlogic, etc. add routes to your app, they should do it in routes.rb. If you have the entry:
map.resource :users
then that's where the /users/123 route is coming from. I agree with Matchu that even if you don't use /users/123 you should keep it and route other requests to it.
An Additional Idea
If you don't want to get into the (kinda complicated, and not pretty) business of preserving model validation errors across redirects, here's another way. I'm assuming from here that you already have map.resource :users, so that you have the 7 default actions on your UsersController (index, new, create, show, edit, update, destroy).
In your routes.rb:
map.profile 'profile', :controller => 'users', :action => 'show'
map.edit_profile 'profile/edit', :controller => 'users', :action => 'edit', :conditions => { :method => :get }
map.update_profile 'profile/edit', :controller => 'users', :action => 'update', :conditions => { :method => :put }
You will need to update your form_for tag slightly:
<% form_for #user, :url => update_profile_path do |f| %> ...
Now, assuming you start on /profile, and click an edit link that takes you to /profile/edit (should show the form), if you fill out the form such that it fails validation then you should end up back on /profile/edit with the correct errors in the f.error_messages output.
Your controller code for edit should stay the same, and your code for update should be:
def update
#user = current_user || User.find(params[:id])
if #user.update_attributes(params[:user])
flash[:notice] = "Successfully updated user."
redirect_to #user
else
render :action => 'edit'
end
end
The render (rather than a redirect) preserves the state of the #user model (including errors) and just renders the edit template again. Since you directed it at the update_profile_path the url viewed by the user is still /profile/edit.
Umm, first, remove the /users/current route that you must have in your routes.rb somewhere. (Although I prefer /users/current to /users/current_users, since the latter is rather redundant.)
As for /users/123, in your controller, you can check if the current user's ID matches 123 or whatever, and, if so, redirect.
But I really prefer the opposite effect. Pushing /users/current to /users/123 makes more sense in my brain, since it keeps the routes consistent for all users while still allowing you to cache links to /users/current.
I have a Reports controller and various reports:
http://localhost/reports/main/this_month
http://localhost/reports/main/last_month
http://localhost/reports/main/this_year
I wanted http://localhost to default to http://localhost/reports/main/this_month. That is easy enough using map.root in my routes.rb.
However when I do this any links to http://localhost/reports/main/this_month are now shortened to just http://localhost. I want the links to stay full
I think it is very possible in Rails 2. The url string that is generated depends on which url helper you call in your view.
map.reports '/reports/:action/:timeframe', :controller => :reports
# todo pretty this up with some more named routes for reports
map.root :controller => "reports", :action => "main", :timeframe => "this_month"
Now, root_url will be http://locahost/. When you use reports_url(:action => 'main', :timeframe => 'this_month'), it will be http://localhost/reports/main/this_month. They both render the same action.
It sounds like you have set up the root, but just don't create any links with root_url.
One option is using a dummy controller that makes a redirect_to.
Routes:
map.reports '/reports/:action/:timeframe', :controller => :reports
# this triggers the action 'index' on 'welcome'
map.root :controller => "welcome"
And then on the Welcome controller:
class WelcomeController < Application: ApplicationController
def index
redirect_to :controller => "reports", :action => "main", :timeframe => "this_month"
end
end
As far as I know this is not possible in Rails 2 by default. There is a plugin called Redirect Routing that will allow it, however, which you could look into. In Rails 3, this functionality is built in. You can read about it in The Lowdown on Routes in Rails 3 over at Engine Yard.
Right now my user profile URLs are like so:
http://example.com/users/joeschmoe
And that points to the show method in the user controller.
What I'd ideally like to do is offer user profile URLs like this:
http://example.com/joeschmoe
So, what sort of route and controller magic needs to happen to pull that off?
I disagree with what jcm says about this. It's not a terrible idea at all and is used in production by the two biggest social networks Facebook and MySpace.
The route to match http://example.com/username would look like this:
map.connect ':username', :controller => 'users', :action => 'show'
If you want to go the subdomain route and map profiles to a URL like http://username.example.com/, I recommend using the SubdomainFu plugin and the resulting route would look like:
map.root :controller => 'users', :action => 'show' , :conditions => {:subdomain => /.+/}
These broad, catch all routes should be defined last in routes.rb, so that they are of lowest priority, and more specific routes will match first.
I also recommend using a validation in your User model to eliminate the possibility of a user choosing a username that will collide with current and future routes:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_exclusion_of :username, :in => %w( messages posts blog forum admin profile )
…
end
This does not make sense unless you have no controllers. What happens when you want to name a controller the same as an existing user? What if a user creates a username the same as one of your controllers? This looks like a terrible idea. If you think the /user/ is too long try making a new custom route for /u/
So your custom route would be...
map.connect 'u/:id', :controller => 'my/usercontroller', :action => 'someaction'
In routes.rb this should do the trick:
map.connect ":login", :controller => 'users', :action => 'show'
Where login is the name of the variable passed to the show method. Be sure to put it after all other controller mappings.
Well, one thing you need is to ensure that you don't have name collisions with your users and controllers.
Once you do that you, can add a route like this:
map.connect ':username', :controller => 'users', :action => 'show'
Another thing people have done is to use subdomains and rewrite rules in the web server, so you can have http://joeshmoe.example.com
In Rails 4 to skip controller from url you have to do add path: ''.
resources :users, path: '' do
end
Let's say I have a Ruby on Rails blogging application with a Post model. By default you would be able to read posts by http://.../post/id. I've added a route
map.connect ':title', :controller => 'posts', :action => 'show'
that will accept http://.../title (titles are unique) and the controller will do a query for the title and display the page. However when I am now calling <%= link_to h(post.title), post %> in a view, Rails still gives me links of the type post/id.
Is it possible to get Rails to automatically create the pretty links for me in this case?
If you are willing to accept: http:/.../1234-title-text you can just do:
def to_param
[id, title.parameterize].join("-")
end
AR::Base.find ignores the bit after the id, so it "just works".
To make the /title go away, try naming your route:
map.post ':id', :controller => 'posts', :action => 'show', :conditions => {:id => /[0-9]+-.*/ }
Ensure this route appears after any map.resources :posts call.
You can override ActiveRecord's to_param method and make it return the title. By doing so, you don't need to make its own route for it. Just remember to URL encode it.
What might be a better solution is to take a look at what The Ruby Toolbox has to offer when it comes to permalinks. I think using one of these will be better than to fixing it yourself via to_param.
I would use a permalink database column, a route, and I normally skip using link_to in favor of faster html anchor tags.
Setting your route like:
map.connect '/post/:permalink', :controller => 'post', :action => 'show'
then in posts_controller's show:
link = params[:permalink]
#post = Post.find_by_permalink(link)
You link would then be
Link
then in your create method, before save, for generating the permalink
#post = Post.new(params[:post])
#post.permalink = #post.subject.parameterize
if #post.save
#ect
There is a Gem for you to get this done perfectly
https://github.com/rsl/stringex