Question

How do I route to a page that ends with an id?

E.G. 
before: site.com/messages/8
after:  site.com/messages/terrytibbs

I’ve tried:

match "/messages/:username" => "messages#id"

No luck so far. Just trying to make the url have a little more meaning by replacing the number with the username of the user the current user is talking to.

Kind regards

Answer 1

If you want something simple without having to change your routes etc, why not do this:

class Message

  def to_param
    "#{id}-{username}"
  end

...
end

Assuming you have a username attribute on your message. That will make your url look like:

site.com/messages/8-terrytibbs

this works because of the following (say in irb):

“8-terrytibbs”.to_i
=> 8

and when rails looks up your message in your controller it will do the same thing to the id parameter.

EDIT: there is an excellent railscast on this here: http://railscasts.com/episodes/63-model-name-in-url and an updated version here: http://railscasts.com/episodes/63-model-name-in-url-revised