Can controller names in RESTful routes be optional? - ruby-on-rails

With a standard map.resource routing mechanics and several nested resources the resultant routes are unnecessarily long. Consider the following route:
site.org/users/pavelshved/blogs/blogging-horror/posts/12345
It's easy to create in routes.rb, and I'm sure it follows some kind of beneficial routing logic. But it's way too long and also seems like it's not intended to be human-readable.
A nice improvement would be to drop controller names, so it looks like:
site.org/pavelshved/blogging-horror/12345
Clear, simple, short. It may become ambiguous, but in my case I'm not going to name any user "users", for instance.
I tried setting :as => '', but it yields routes like this: site.org//pavelshved//blogging-horror//12345 when generating them by standard helpers.
Is there a way to map resources in such a way, that controller names become optional?

You're looking for the :path_prefix option for resources.
map.resources :users do |user|
user.resources :blogs do |blog|
blog.resources :posts, :path_prefix => '/:user_login/:blog_title/:id'
end
end
Will produce restful routes for all blogs of this form: site.org/pavelshved/bogging-horror/posts/1234. You'll need to go to a little extra effort to use the url helpers but nothing a wrapper of your own couldn't quickly fix.
The only way to get rid of the posts part of the url is with named routes, but those require some duplication to make restful. And you'll run into the same problems when trying to use route helpers.

The simplest way to get what you want would be to create a route in addition to your RESTful routes that acts as a shorthand:
map.short_blog ':user_id/:blog_id/:id', :controller => 'posts', :action => 'show'
You'll have to change the URL bits to work with how you're filtering the name of the user and the name of their blog. But then when you want to use the shorter URL you can use all the short_blog_* magic.

Straight out of the default routes.rb:
map.connect 'products/:id', :controller => 'catalog', :action => 'view'
You could write:
map.connect ':user_id/:blog_id/:id', :controller => 'posts', :action => 'show'
But be sure to include that in the very end of the file, or it will try to match every three levels deep url to it.

Try this
map.pavelshved '/pavelshved/', :controller => :users, :action => view or
map.pavelshved '/:id', :controller => :users, :action => show do | blogs|
blogs.bloging '/:id', :controller => :blogs, :action => show do | post|
post.posting '/:id', :controller => :posts, :action => show
end
end
I hope it work :)

Google "rails shallow routes" for information about this.

Related

Can't figure out how Rails route helper should look

I am working on an assignment which includes adding a feature to Typo.
rake routes shows:
admin_content /admin/content {:controller=>"admin/content", :action=>"index"}
/admin/content(/:action(/:id)) {:action=>nil, :id=>nil, :controller=>"admin/content"}
I need to create a route helper which matches the following RESTful route: /admin/content/edit/:id and an example of url is /admin/content/edit/1
But I can't figure out how to do it. I tried something like admin_content_path(edit,some_article) but it didn't work. (some_article is just an article object)
In routes.rb file:
# some other code
# Admin/XController
%w{advanced cache categories comments content profiles feedback general pages
resources sidebar textfilters themes trackbacks users settings tags redirects seo post_types }.each do |i|
match "/admin/#{i}", :to => "admin/#{i}#index", :format => false
match "/admin/#{i}(/:action(/:id))", :to => "admin/#{i}", :action => nil, :id => nil, :format => false
end
#some other code
Thanks a lot for your help!
If you are using RESTful routes, why not use the Rails default routes?
So your routes.rb would look like
namespace :admin do
resources :content
resources :advanced
resources :categories
resources :comments
...
<etc>
end
This does assume all your controllers are in the folder admin (but from your comment this seems to be the case.
If you do that, you can just use the standard route-helper: edit_admin_content_path.
If you want to do it manually, you should try adding a name to your route. E.g. as follows:
match "/admin/#{i}/:action(/:id)" => "admin/#{i}", :as => "admin_#{i}_with_action"
and then you should do something like
admin_content_with_action(:action => 'edit', :id => whatevvvva)
As a side-note: I really do not like the meta-programming in your config/routes.rb, if for whatever you really find that the default resources are not a right fit, I would advise to use methods instead (as explained here)
So for example in your config/routes.rb you would write:
def add_my_resource(resource_name)
match "/#{resource_name}", :to => "#{resource_name}#index", :format => false
match "/#{resource_name}(/:action(/:id))", :to => "#{resource_name}", :as => 'admin_#{resource_name}_with_action", :action => nil, :id => nil, :format => false
end
namespace :admin do
add_my_resource :content
add_my_resource :advanced
add_my_resource :categories
...
end
which imho is much more readable.
But my advice, unless you really-really need to avoid it, would be to use the standard resources since you do not seem to add anything special.
HTH.

Get SEO friendly URLS with Rails without method_missing?

Currently we are using method_missing to catch for calls to SEO friendly actions in our controllers rather than creating actions for every conceivable value for a variable. What we want are URLS like this:
/students/BobSmith
and NOT /students/show/342
IS there a cleaner solution than method_missing?
Thank you!
You can define a route for that particular format fairly easily.
map.connect "/students/:name", :controller => :students, :action => :show, :requirements => {:name => /[A-Z][A-Z]+/}
Then in your show action you can find by name using params[:name].
You can create a catch-all route. Put this at the bottom of config/routes.rb with whatever controller and action you want:
map.connect '*path', :controller => '...', :action => '...'
The segments of the route will be available to your controller in the params[:path] array.

customize rails url with username

I want to copy the twitter profile page and have a url with a username "http://www.my-app.com/username" and while I can manually type this into the address bar and navigate to the profile page I can't link to the custom URL.
I think the problem is in the routes - here's the code in my routes.rb
map.connect '/:username', :controller => 'users', :action => 'show'
Also, I have Question and Answer models and I want to link to them with the customized URL like so:
http://www.my-app.com/username/question/answer/2210
There's nothing wrong with your route. Just remember to define it at the end, after defining all other routes. I would also recommend using RESTful routes and only if you want to have better looking URLs use named routes. Don't use map.connect. Here's some good reading about Rails routes.
Here's how this could look:
map.resources :questions, :path_prefix => '/:username' do |question|
question.resources :answers
end
map.resources :users
map.user '/:username', :controller => 'users', :action => 'show'
Just a draft you can extend.
To create urls you need to define to_param method for your user model (read here).
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
def to_param
username
end
end
I know this questions is old but it will help someone.
You could try the below. I've used it in a rails 4 project and all seems to be working great. The reason for the as: :admin is I also had a resources posts outside of this scope. It will add a admin to the helper calls e.g. admin_posts_path
scope ":username", module: 'admin', as: :admin do
get '', to: 'profiles#show'
resources :posts
end
I have used like this
In View part
portfolio.user.name,:id =>portfolio) %>
and in rout.rb
map.show_portfolio "portfolios/:username", :action => 'show_portfolio', :controller => 'portfolios'

Routing in Rails

I'm designing a minimalistic wiki in RoR. Basically a project have many pages. My routing file looks like this:
map.root :controller => "projects"
map.resources :projects, :has_many => :pages
map.connect ':id', :controller => 'projects', :action => 'show'
map.connect ':project_id/:id', :controller => 'pages', :action => 'show'
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'
This allow me to access, for example, the 'main' page of 'teaching' project like this:
http://localhost:3000/teaching/main
However, as soon as I click a link, it gets transformed to this:
http://localhost:3000/projects/teaching/pages/main
How can I make the helper methods that create URLs to stick to the scheme I want? I tried named routes, but I must be missing something out because it didn't worked...
I would ditch the map.connect stuff - it's not very RESTful, and can get you very confused.
At first glance I thought you could use the :member and :collection directives to add in what you wanted, but when I look more closely I realised it won't help.
I'm having a little difficulty understanding your data model - a page can have many pages? Or is teaching the project name and then it has pages?
If that is the case, then you probably need to look at a plugin like SubDomainFu and use subdomains based on project names, rather than hacking the routes file directly. We have used this successfully to give a scheme like you describe (the domain implies the project, bit of extra code required) and also things like teaching.yourdomain.com and learning.yourdomain.com (which can be fun if you want to use SSL, but that's a different story).
Rails is all about convention over configuration. You have to buy into the conventions if you want the convenience that Rails brings. I would strongly encourage sticking to the RESTful model and accept what rails is doing now.
With that said, you can probably hack something together. It won't be pretty and it'll be a pain every time you want to create a link.
So first get rid of
map.resources :projects, :has_many => :pages
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'
because the map.resources is thing that is sending you to url you don't want and the two map.connect's don't help you either. So now you should just have
map.connect ':project_id/:id', :controller => 'pages', :action => 'show'
map.connect ':id', :controller => 'projects', :action => 'show'
Then when ever you want to create a link you are going to have to make it yourself. You are going to want to use something like this:
<%= link_to 'Blah', :project_id => #project, :id => #project.pages.first %>
or something like that. I don't know if that is exactly how are going to specify the route, you are probably going to have to change the :project_id and :id symbols.
Like I said you don't want to take this route if you don't have to. Stick to the conventions as much as you can because it'll make your life much easier.

Giving a nested route an alias in Rails

If I want to provide an alias for a controller, I can use map.resources :rants, :controller => 'blog_posts' yoursite.com/rants points to the blog_posts controller fine.
How do I give an alias to a nested resource, for example yoursite.com/users/5/rants ?
You may want to try:
map.resources :rants, :controller => 'blog_posts'
map.resources :users do |users|
users.resources :rants, :controller => 'blog_posts'
end
This will give you the yoursite.com/users/5/rants/ url that you are looking for and it will generate the handy methods (for example: users_rants_path(#user))
Hope this helps.

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