renaming routes (map, link_to, to_param) in rails - ruby-on-rails

I'm having a little issue...I setup a rails application that is to serve a german website. To make use of Rails' internal pluralization features, I kept all my models in english (e.g. the model "JobDescription").
Now, if I call "http://mysite.com/job_descriptions/", I get all my job_descriptions....so far, so good. Because I didn't want the english term "job_descriptions" in my url, I put the following into my routes.rb
map.german_term '/german_term', :controller => 'job_descriptions', :action => 'index'
map.german_term '/german_term/:id', :controller => 'job_descriptions', :action => 'show'
If I call "http://mysite.com/german_term/" or "http://mysite.com/german_term/283" I get all my job_descriptions, which is fine.
However, to make the URL more SEO friendly, I'd like to exchange the id for a more userfriendly slug in the URL. Thus, I put the following in my job_description.rb:
def to_param
"#{id}-#{name.gsub(/[^a-z0-9]+/i, '-')}"
end
which, whenever I use "job_description_path" in any link_to method, renders my URLs out to something like "http://mysite/job_descriptions/13-my-job-description-title".
However, and this is where I'm stuck, I'd like to get "http://mysite/german_term/13-my-job-description-title". I already tried to exchange the "job_description_path" with "german_term_path" in the link_to code, but that only generates "http://mysite/german_term/13". Obviously, to_param isn't called.
One workaround I found is to build the link with:
<%= link_to job_description.name, german_term_path(job_description.to_param) %>
But that's rather tedious to change all the link_to calls in my code. What I want is to replace "job_description" by "german_term" whenever it occurs in a URL.
Any thoughts?!?
Regards,
Sebastian

I think you're going to need to use the restful route helpers to get what you want.
In that case, it wouldn't take much re-factoring (assuming you've mapped JobDescriptions as a resource). Leave your to_param as is and change your JobDescriptions route to something like the following:
map.resources :job_descriptions, :as => 'german_term'
Hope this helps!

Rails only utilizes the
def to_params
end
URL builder when you are using a restful route/link helper. The only way I am aware of is to do it similar to how you did, unless you are willing to just scrap your english language links and do it all in German. In that case, just get rid of the named route lines and change the to_params to use the correct name field from the database. At that point, the REST routes should behave correctly.

Related

Error using alias for routes in Ruby on Rails

I have a route with a namespace
namespace :publishers do
resources :authors
get 'books' :to => 'books'
get 'books/custom_report/:id', :to => "curriculos#custom_report"
end
Often I will have to make links in my application and I know than it`s possible to use a alias for routing like this:
<%= link_to "Books", publishers_books_path %>
I call that publishers_books_path a alias route, does this is the correct name?
Furthermore, I still not able to understand the logic with this alias naming because i can`t use for a new or a custom action like this
link_to 'Show the report', publishers_books_custom_report_path(params[:id])
I'm always get a error of undefined_method for publishers_books_custom_report_path
So there`s some questions
First of all whats it`s the correct name of this feature in RoR?
How I can use the custom_report as aliases to link_to? And also if i need to use some basic operations like new, update, insert?
Can someone give me the link to the documentation to really understant that feature?
First of all whats it`s the correct name of this feature in RoR?
The docs use "path helper" and "named route helpers" interchangeably.
How I can use the custom_report as aliases to link_to?
Use rails route or visit /rails/info/routes in your dev server to get a list of all your routes, their helpers, and controller actions.
Apparently it is publishers_path which doesn't seem right. You can fix this with an as.
get 'books/custom_report/:id', to: "curriculos#custom_report", as: :books_custom_report
And also if i need to use some basic operations like new, update,
insert?
A get declares just that one specific route. If you need all the operations on a model, declare it as a resource.
namespace :publishers do
resource :authors
resource :books
get 'books/custom_report/:id', to: "curriculos#custom_report", as: :books_custom_report
end
Can someone give me the link to the documentation to really understand that feature?
Rails Routing From The Outside In.

Invalid route name for GET and POST

I'm working through an older tutorial that was done for Rails 3. I'm using Rails 4.1.4.
One of the instructions is to change the routes file to include the following:
get '/boards/:board_id/conversations/:id/reply' => "conversations#reply", :as => :reply_board_conversation
post '/boards/:board_id/conversations/:id/reply' => "conversations#save_reply", :as => :reply_board_conversation
Obviously that gives me an error:
Invalid route name, already in use: 'reply_board_conversation'
It seems to me that the route is somehow trying to replicate the behaviour of a new and create action. Get for new and Post for create with a single route.
The problem is I can't figure out how to rewrite the route so it works. I've googled for solutions but can't seem to find anything. If anyone could point me in the right direction it would be hugely appreciated.
It looks like the only issue is with the duplicated "named route" name reply_board_conversation. So you could simply change one. I'd probably rename the save version to save_reply_board_conversation. Then it should work. Just remember to refer to the route this way in the future. This would primarily be used in a form tag. So, for exmaple:
<= form_tag :url => save_reply_board_conversation_path do %>
Note the use of save_reply_board_conversation_path instead of reply_board_conversation_path given that the form would be submitting a POST request instead of a GET request.
The names for these routes should be different although since the composition of the URL is the same so you really only need a name for the first one.
The trick with named routes is they generate the URL only, they do not set the HTTP request method. That has to be done independently.
That means you can call the same named route two different ways:
<%= link_to('View', board_path(#board)) %>
<%= link_to('Delete', board_path(#board), method: :delete) %>
These actually render as the same URL but one will hit the GET route, the other the DELETE one.

Why is link_to with an absolute url considered technically superior to targetting controller action?

New to rails, so if this is discussed somewhere, just link me off: I had a good search but all I could find were people trying to figure out how to use link_to, not any discussion of this comment:
link_to "Profile", profile_path(#profile)
# => Profile
in place of the older more verbose, non-resource-oriented
link_to "Profile", :controller => "profiles", :action => "show", :id => #profile
# => Profile
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHelper.html#method-i-link_to
I get that the latter is more verbose, and thus undesirable, but the former seems like a strange thing to be recommending.
If I have an action at say: /blah/add and I link to it using:
link_to "Link", link_add_path
Then I'm linking to mysite.com/link/add. This is a hard coded url.
If I change the route that this maps to, I have to change every instance of link_to in my code base to point to the new absolute url. This seems crazy.
However, if I link to it using:
link_to "Link", :controller => "thing", :action => "add"
Then the url is dynamically determined. If I have to change the path all I do is edit config/routes.rb and not touch any of my code. This seems like much lower maintenance.
I appreciate it's slightly more complex than that, the blah_path variable is not actually a static route, and actually contains some smarts like the application base url and prevents you from linking to urls that don't exist, but it seems like a step backwards to facilitate a fractionally less verbose syntax.
So, what's up with that?
What technical reason would you choose the former link_to syntax over the latter?
"You're doing it wrong" :P
Seriously though: use named resources, and here's why that's cool:
Example:
you've got this in your routes file:
resources :user_orders
And you are using "user_orders_path" everywhere. Then you do a refactor and decide (because the orders are now generic) that you want the controller to be called "orders" but you don't want to break all your old code. you can do this:
resources :user_orders, controller: "orders"
And your existing links will continue to work! (plus you can add a "orders" resource to move things over to the new scheme)
There's also neat things like named links:
match 'exit' => 'sessions#destroy', :as => :logout
I'd also like to add, if you needed to refactor your controller using the old link syntax - you'd still have to change a pile of controller links!
Then I'm linking to mysite.com/link/add. This is a hard coded url.
No, it's not. link_add_path is a method generated by Rails that points to a specific route in your config/routes.rb. You can see this by running
rake routes | grep link_add
If I change the route that this maps to, I have to change every instance of link_to in my code base to point to the new absolute url. This seems crazy.
No, you don't. Take the following example
get "link/add", as: :link_add, controller: :links, action: :add
If I run the above
rake routes | grep link_add
I get
link_add GET /link/add(.:format) links#add
But what if I change the name of my controller to UrisController? Just change the route in config/routes.rb
get "link/add", as: :link_add, controller: :uris, action: :add
and now you have
link_add GET /link/add(.:format) uris#add
The link_to's don't have to change because the link_add_path method is still mapped to the newly modified line in my config/routes.rb because the route name is the same. With your more explicit way of specifying controllers/actions for every link_to, you have to go through every link and update it manually to reflect the new controller: :uris controller.
Read about Naming Routes in the rails guide.

Rails "pretty URLs", using entries/23 or 2011/07/some-post-slug-here for creating URLs via helpers

I'm attempting to create "pretty URLs" for linking to posts in a blog. I want to maintain access to the blog entries via entries/23 and 2011/07/some-post-slug-here as I only generate a slug once an entry has been published (just in case the title of the posts changes, and, though not a strict requirement, I would prefer to be able to edit/delete posts via the entries/23 style URL. Currently, the appropriate part of what I have in my config/routes.rb:
root :to => 'entries#index'
resources :entries
match ':year/:month/:slug' => 'entries#show', :constraints => {
:year => /[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]/,
:month => /[0-9][0-9]/,
:slug => /[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+/
}, :as => :vanity_entry
and I use this (in my application helper) function for creating the links:
def appropriate_entry_path entry
if entry.published
vanity_entry_path entry.published_on.year.to_s, entry.published_on.month.to_s, entry.slug
else
entries_path entry
end
end
def appropriate_entry_url entry
if entry.published
vanity_entry_url entry.published_on.year.to_s, entry.published_on.month.to_s, entry.slug
else
entries_url entry
end
end
Basically, I check if the article is published (and therefore has a slug) and then use that URL/path helper, or otherwise use the default one.
However, when trying to use this, I get the following from Rails:
No route matches {:slug=>"try-this-one-on-for", :month=>"7", :controller=>"entries", :year=>"2011", :action=>"show"}
I have tried a few different solutions, including overriding to_param in my Entry model, however then I would have to create match routes for the edit/delete actions, and I would like to keep my routes.rb file as clean as possible. Ideally, I would also love to lose the appropriate_entry_path/appropriate_entry_url helper methods, but I'm not sure that this is possible?
Is there any thing I am missing regarding routing that might make this easier and/or is there any specific way of doing this that is the cleanest?
Thanks in advance.
You might want to take a look at friendly_id. It's a gem for creating seo friendly slugs :)
I found the issue with what I had been doing, the regex for :month in the route wanted two numbers, whereas I was only passing in one number. Anyways, I decided that the URLs look nicer (in my opinion) without the month padded to 2 digits, so I updated my route accordingly.

Validate no routing overlap when creating new resources in Ruby on Rails

I've got a RESTful setup for the routes in a Rails app using text permalinks as the ID for resources.
In addition, there are a few special named routes as well which overlap with the named resource e.g.:
# bunch of special URLs for one off views to be exposed, not RESTful
map.connect '/products/specials', :controller => 'products', :action => 'specials'
map.connect '/products/new-in-stock', :controller => 'products', :action => 'new_in_stock'
# the real resource where the products are exposed at
map.resources :products
The Product model is using permalink_fu to generate permalinks based on the name, and ProductsController does a lookup on the permalink field when accessing. That all works fine.
However when creating new Product records in the database, I want to validate that the generated permalink does not overlap with a special URL.
If a user tries to create a product named specials or new-in-stock or even a normal Rails RESTful resource method like new or edit, I want the controller to lookup the routing configuration, set errors on the model object, fail validation for the new record, and not save it.
I could hard code a list of known illegal permalink names, but it seems messy to do it that way. I'd prefer to hook into the routing to do it automatically.
(controller and model names changed to protect the innocent and make it easier to answer, the actual setup is more complicated than this example)
Well, this works, but I'm not sure how pretty it is. Main issue is mixing controller/routing logic into the model. Basically, you can add a custom validation on the model to check it. This is using undocumented routing methods, so I'm not sure how stable it'll be going forward. Anyone got better ideas?
class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
#... other logic and stuff here...
validate :generated_permalink_is_not_reserved
def generated_permalink_is_not_reserved
create_unique_permalink # permalink_fu method to set up permalink
#TODO feels really ugly having controller/routing logic in the model. Maybe extract this out and inject it somehow so the model doesn't depend on routing
unless ActionController::Routing::Routes.recognize_path("/products/#{permalink}", :method => :get) == {:controller => 'products', :id => permalink, :action => 'show'}
errors.add(:name, "is reserved")
end
end
end
You can use a route that would not otherwise exist. This way it won't make any difference if someone chooses a reserved word for a title or not.
map.product_view '/product_view/:permalink', :controller => 'products', :action => 'view'
And in your views:
product_view_path(:permalink => #product.permalink)
It's a better practice to manage URIs explicitly yourself for reasons like this, and to avoid accidentally exposing routes you don't want to.

Resources