How would i go about routing www.homepage.com/site/about to www.homepage.com/about for example? I still would like to use "site" as a controller, I just want to remove it from the route.
On a separate note, ss this how you usually setup routes for pages like about and contact that appear right after the site name?
For the first question, you could put something like this in your routes.rb:
map.about '/about', :controller => 'site', :action => 'about'
As for the second question, i don't quite undestand it, can you be a little more specific?
On a separate note, ss this how you usually setup routes for pages like about and contact that appear right after the site name?
If you follow the principles of REST (and you probably should), then by and large every URL should be terminating in a "resource" (ie: a noun, a "thing"). Each resource in turn has a controller, and these controllers have a standardized and limited set of actions.
This is a bit different from the "classic" routing scheme, where a controller would have more varied actions (and thus you could lump more functionality into a single, larger controller)
So, for example, in a RESTful system:
/contact would map to a ContactController, and not a "contact" action in some other controller (as it could in classic routing)
/about would similarly map to an AboutController.
/site/about would map to an AboutController, but this would be a "nested" route under the Site namespace. If you want to get hardcore about the nesting (and I typically do), I would:
Put AboutController in the Site module (thus Sites::AboutController), which in turn is stored in the file /app/controllers/site/about_controller.rb
Create a SiteController
Map /site to SiteController
If you had a preexisting Site:AboutController mapped to /site/about and you wanted to remap it to /about, you could do so using #rbaezam79's method. However, I'd seriously consider relocating and renaming the class itself just for consistency.
All of the resources I listed above would probably be considered "singleton" resources. This means:
you use map.resource instead of map.resources to map your routes
the default action is "show" (and not "index" as it is with non-singleton resources). Typically this will be the only action you need. (You wouldn't ever want to create or delete your about page, would you?)
the names are typically singular instead of plural. (Although I've run into some stumbling blocks with this)
When setting up routes like this, be sure to run the command "rake routes" regularly; this will show you exactly what you're getting at any given time.
Related
Is there a way to self nest a resource in the routes infinetelly?
Suppose the following scenario: I want to create several pages that may be self nested one to another, like a products page has many product pages and each product page has several sub-pages etc.
The resource would be a page in a tree structure , like with the awesome nested set gem.
In case an admin can create pages at unknown depth level how would I make the routes?
The above example has to produce a url like /:friendly_id_of_level_1/:friendly_id_of_level_2/.../:friendly_id_of_level_n
I've tried going with dynamic routes but it has many drawbacks this way.
Any suggestions?
I do a similar thing to this in one of my apps with this route:
map.connect "/c/*modules", :controller => "content", :action => "show"
(Note this is using rails2 routing syntax, you might need to update it).
This will resolve this url
/c/123-foo/456-bar/789-baz/653-qux
to the content#show action, with params set like
params = {"modules"=>[123-foo", "456-bar", "789-baz", "653-qux"]}
The modules are in a tree structure, so i can use the sequence of module ids in params[:modules] to make a breadcrumb chain and any other heirarchical data, and i use the last one in the array as the "current" one to actually show to the user.
Note: I put the "/c/" at the start of the url to separate these nested routes out from all my other routes: otherwise it's very greedy and will match pretty much any url on your site. That's not a problem if you want to always have it as your "catchall" route down at the bottom of your routes file, but if not then you'll need to add something to make it distinct. Obviously this doesn't need to be "/c/", you could have anything which will stop it colliding with your other routes.
Assume the following paths to be legitimate and resolving:
http://test.local/wizards/home
http://test.local/wizards/wizardfest2012/dates
http://test.local/dragons/
http://test.local/dragons/blog/stop-slaying-us
http://test.local/
This is (if you couldn't tell) for a CMS that includes a blog, so the slugs would be generated by the user. I have some routes to process first for reserved namespaces (admin, for example).
I assume that the user generated routes need to be routed to a Page controller - but, I don't think pragmatically adding a line to routes.rb is efficient. My question then, is how do I process the first part of the params (in this case, wizards and dragons) to get the correct information from the model?
Here's one of my ideas - split (somehow) the first part of the slug (again, wizards and dragons and pass the rest of the slug (for example, /wizardfest2012/dates) to the model to fetch the associated content.
Any thoughts on the most efficient way to do this?
I am not sure whether I understand what you want to achieve, but maybe this is what you want:
constraints :camp => /wizards|dragons/ do
match ':camp/home' => "pages#home"
match ':camp/blog/:title' => "pages#blog"
# ...and all the routes with known components
match ':camp/*other' => "pages#other"
end
You may create a before_filter which will recognize the params[:camp] and prepare the necessary models or whatever is needed.
The other action will receive the string "wizardfest2012/dates" as params[:other]. I hope that it was what you needed.
The "Rails Routing from the Outside In" guide may be worth reading, unless you have already read it.
Dumb question but I have some lingering confusion of what, exactly, a "resource" is in Rails. The term is used everywhere but I get a funny feeling it might be being used rather loosely. It's referenced in the model, the controller and, quite literally, in routes.rb.
Is it the specific route? For example, map.resources maps the 7 RESTful "resources". So an example of one resource would be the call to, say, the index action of a particular class's controller?!?
Is it a reference to the whole page/object being retrieved? or perhaps, more narrowly, a database table? or the row being retreived?
Is it something else?
Anyway, hopefully someone can set me straight...
Any object that you want users to be able to access via URI and perform CRUD (or some subset thereof) operations on can be thought of as a resource. In the Rails sense, it is generally a database table which is represented by a model, and acted on through a controller.
For example, you might have a User resource (with a users table in your DB). This is represented by a User model, is mapped to users_controller with map.resources :users (which then generates routes like /users (a collection of User resources) and /users/1 (a specific User resource).
You act upon those resources by using the appropriate HTTP method when making calls to those resources. POST to the resource collection (/users) creates a new record; GET retrieves a list of resources (/users) or a specific user (/users/1). PUT updates a specific user (/users/1/), and DELETE destroys that user. The URLs are the same, but the result (and controller action) may be different based on the HTTP verb. The idea, though is that /users/1 always means "I'm interacting with the User that has ID #1", regardless of the action.
Here's a good article discussing how most developers think that "Resource" is synonomous with the database table, the argument, I guess, being that mapping to the resource is mapping the controller to that database table (or, with ActiveResource, to another REST url).
Basically, I think a "resource" is "persisted data." map.resources maps the 7 RESTful actions to a particular suite of persisted data.
But I haven't thought about it too much in depth. Good question!
I think they probably mean it in the general web sense, i.e., Resource (Web):
the referent of any Uniform Resource Identifier
I don't think it has anything to do with database tables.
open your model folder, that is a hint of what resources you have!
example: users, pictures, comments...
A lot of people here say that resources refer to the database tables you have. It might be true sometimes but not necessarily true always. I could give you a lot of examples where you don't have a corresponding table in your database for a particular resource. Hence asssociating it with tables is rather wrong.
I would define a resource as a route which maps to related requests. So instead of declaring separate routes for the actions you want to do you can simply declare them using a resourceful route.In Rails, a resourceful route provides a mapping between HTTP requests and URLs to controller actions.
So say you define resources :users in config/routes.rb. You can now use a number of helpers to the controllers in your application like edit_user_path which returns users/edit .
Here's a good link: https://api.rubyonrails.org/v5.2.1/classes/ActionDispatch/Routing/Mapper/Resources.html
Which basically says: Resource routing allows you to quickly declare all of the common routes for a given resourceful controller. Instead of declaring separate routes for your index, show, new, edit, create, update and destroy actions, a resourceful route declares them in a single line of code:
resources :photos
I'm building an article/blog website where any article may show up within a series of URL paths.
/section/article
/section/page/article
/section/page/page2/article
This works, but what if I wanted to have the page number for that article (/page/123) be bound to those URLs
/section/article/page/123/
/section/page/article/page/123
/section/page/page2/article/page/123
This would mean that I would have to create a specific route for each different url?
/:section/:page/:sub_page/:article/page/:page
This would mean that I would create dozens of URL routing paramters.
Is there anyway in rails to say that all urls may have a /page/NUMBER suffix at the end of the URL and still route normally (that is assign the NUMBER to a parameter and continue to goto the page normally)?
Route globbing, described at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html#route-globbing, might work in this situation. For example, your route might read map.connect '/:section/*page_subpage_path/page/:number', :controller => 'articles', :action => 'show'
This exact code might not work as intended, but this method might be a good direction to try. Good luck :)
If you want to create routes that are as customized as that you normally need to create a large number of routes to accommodate them. The general format is /resource/:id when using map.resource, anything other than that is left to you to specify.
Given that the Rails routes.rb file is executable ruby you can often define your routes programmatically by repeating patterns or doing combinations on arrays if required.
I started a Rails project recently and decided to use RESTful controllers. I created controllers for my key entities (such as Country) and added index, new, edit, create, show, update and delete. I added my map.resources :country to my routes file and life was good.
After development progressed a little, I started to encounter problems. I sometimes needed extra actions in my controller. First there was the search action that returned the options for my fancy autocompleting search box. Then came the need to display the countries in two different ways in different places in the application (the data displayed was different too, so it wasn't just two views) - I added the index_full action. Then I wanted to show a country by name in the URL, not by id so I added the show_by_name action.
What do you do when you need actions beyond the standard index, new, edit, create, show, update, delete in a RESTful controller in Rails? Do I need to add (and maintain) manual routes in the routes.rb file (which is a pain), do they go in a different controller, do I become unRESTful or am I missing something fundamental?
I guess I am asking, do I need to work harder and add actions into my routes.rb file for the privilege of being RESTful? If I wasn't using map.resources to add the REST goodies, the standard :controller/:action, :controller/:action/:id routes would handle pretty much everything automatically.
I would treat search as a special case of index. Both actions return a collection of resources. The request parameters should specify things like page, limit, sort order, and search query.
For example:
/resources/index # normal index
/resources/index?query=foo # search for 'foo'
And in resources_controller:
before_filter :do_some_preprocessing_on_parameters
def index
#resources = Resource.find_by_param(#preprocessed_params)
end
As for index_full and search_by_name, you might look at splitting your current controller into two. There's a smell about what you've described.
Having said that, you're absolutely right that there's no point in forcing your app to user restful routes when it doesn't deliver anything over /:controller/:action/:id. To make the decision, look how frequently you're using the restful resource route helpers in forms and links. If you're not using them, I wouldn't bother with it.
If I go beyond the standard CRUD actions with my models, I normally just add the methods as required. Searching is something I add to many controllers, but not every one, so I add it and maintain the routes normally:
map.resources :events, :collection => { :search => :get }
Moving these actions to an entirely separate controller might keep some of your controllers RESTful, but I find that keeping them in context is far more useful.
REST does not specify that you can't have additional views. No real world application is going to be able use only the supplied actions; this is why you can add your own actions.
REST is about being able to make stateless calls to the server. Your search action is stateless each time as the data so far is supplied back, correct? Your alternate display action is also stateless, just a different view.
As to if they should be manual routes or a new controller, that depends on how distinct the activity is. Your alternate view, if it provides a full set of CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations would do well to be in a new controller. If you only have an alternate view to the data, I would just add an alternate view action.
In other words, it doesn't sound like your application is failing to be RESTful, it is more an issue of realizing that the automatically generated feature set is a starting point, not a conclusion.
In my opinion they may have gone a bit off the rails here. What happened to DRY?
I'm just getting back into Rails not having done much development with it since beta and I'm still waiting for the light-bulb to come on here. I'm still giving it a chance but if it hasn't happened for me by the end of my current project I'll probably just drop-back to the old standard routes and define the methods as I actually need them for the next one.
I won't go on to explain more about REST since I think that has been answered in this question, however I will talk a little bit about the default route.
My main problem with the default route is that if you have multiple sites using the same Rails app it can look horrible.
For example there may be controllers that you don't want people to be able to see on one app:
http://example1.somesite.com/example_2/foo/bar/1
compare this to
/:controller/:action/:id
This would go to the controller example_2/foo, action bar and id 1
I consider this to be the main flaw of Rails' default route and this is something that RESTful routes (with subdomain extensions) or only named routes (map.connect 'foo' ... ) can fix.
To remain RESTful in your design, you need to rethink what you call a resource.
In your example a show action for a search controller, (search resource) is the direction to remain restful.
In mine, I have a dashboard controller (show) and controllers for single fields of in-place ecditors (show and update)