Pretty URL in Rails when linking - ruby-on-rails

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

Related

Force current_user path

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.

Destroy? Delete? What's going on here? Rails 2.3.5

I am new to rails. My rails version is 2.3.5. I found usage like:
In controller, a destroy method is defined and in view, you can use :action => "delete" to fire that method. Isn't the action name has to be the same as the method name? Why delete is mapped to destroy?
Again, in my controller, I define a method called destroy to delete a record. In a view, I have <%= link_to "remove", :action => 'destroy', :id => myrecord %>. But it never works in practice. Every time I press the remove link, it redirects me to the show view, showing the record's content. I am pretty sure that my destroy method is:
def destroy
#myobject = MyObject.find(params[:id])
#myobject.destroy
#redirect_to :action = 'index'
end
If I change the method name from destroy to something like remove_me and change the action name to remove_me in the view, everything works as expected.
In the above two weird problems, I am sure there is no tricky routing set in my configuration.
All in all, seems the destroy and delete are mysterious keywords in rails. Can anyone explain this to me?
You probably set MyObject as a resource in routes.rb. Resources get a couple of routes that don't directly match the name of the action. When you use an action name that does not match the routes defined by the resource, you'll get the default route which directly maps to the name of the action.
I found that this link explains rails' routing very well. Take a look at the "RESTful routing" section.
If you are using REST routing, destory only support delete method. you can change your code like this
link_to "remove", :action => 'destroy', :id => myrecord", :method => :delete
Adding :method => :delete
rails will add a hidden input with name "_method", value "delete"
Replace all :post => true with :method => :post

default URL for a model in rails?

I have a class Post
I want the default URL of each posts to be http://domain.com/9383 instead of http://domain.com/posts/9383
I tried to fix it in the routes. I manage to accept domain.com/222 but if I use <%= url_for(#posts) %> I still get domain.com/posts/222
How can I do it? Thank you
You can't change the behaviour of url_for(#post) with routes. url_for will assume a map.resources setup if an ActiveRecord instance is passed to it.
You should rather do this:
# routes.rb
map.post ":id", :controller => "posts", :action => "show"
# named route
post_path(#post)
# full link_to
link_to #post.title, post_path(#post)
If you're using url_for, there's no way to tell it to omit the /posts/ section. I think you would need to create helper, maybe in application_helper.rb
def post_url(post)
"/#{post.id}"
end
Overriding url_for seems to not be considered a best practice in Rails, although it seems terribly convenient to me. Here's a description of how to do it by customizing ApplicationController: http://arjanvandergaag.nl/blog/generating-fancy-routes-with-rails.html

rails redirect_to problem

I am developing a rails app and have a question.
In my routes.rb:
map.connect 'admin', :controller => "/admin/users", :action => "index"
So when I go to "http://mydomain.com/admin", it redirects to "http://mydomain.com/admin/users/index".
However, the address remains as "http://mydomain.com/admin".
Thus, links in the page are wrong because they are created based on "http://mydomain.com/admin".
What's the solution to this problem?
Sam
try this:
map.connect 'admin/:action/:id', :controller => 'admin/users'
Your code is not redirecting the browser it's just setting up /admin and /admin/users to trigger the same action.
You could try:
map.connect 'admin', :controller => "/admin/users", :action => "redirect_to_index"
Then in your controller write:
def redirect_to_index
redirect_to :action => :index
end
This will send a redirect to the browser, causing it to display the correct URL.
Hopefully there is a better method that only involves routes.rb. This site might be helpful -> redirect-routing-plugin-for-rails
Make sure any same-domain links on the page start with a /, and use the full path. Generally you should use Rails route methods to generate your links when possible. Same goes for using the image_tag and stylesheet_link_tag helpers.
So if you have a link to "privacy.html", change it to "/privacy.html" and you should be all good no matter where in the route structure you are. This is extra nice when you start extracting your view code out to re-usable partials.
Use link_to and button_to (in UrlHelper)

rails routing controller action change

I'm struggling here with a problem:
I have a controller questions which has action new.
Whenever I need to create new question, I'm typing
/questions/new
What changes to routes.rb should I make to change the URI to
/questions/ask
Thank you.
Valve.
Try this:
map.ask_question '/questions/ask', :controller => 'questions', :action => 'new'
Then you'll have a named route and you can:
link_to "Ask a question", ask_question_path
If you are using RESTful routes maybe you'd like to use map.resources for your questions.
To rename the action urls you may do this:
map.resources :questions, :path_names => { :new => 'ask', :delete => 'withdraw' }
(I added delete for the sake of the example)
Which version of rails?
Generally the default route should catch anything like /:controller/:action, so you could just create an ask method in your questions controller. Take a look at the api documentation for named_route and map_resource if you want something a bit smoother to work with.

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