Question

I add this line in my routes.rb file

map.connect ':controller/:action/:id/:title', :controller => "recipes"

thinking that I am adding the recipe title at the end of the URL and this would only apply to the recipe controller. I have also declared a resource at the beginning of the file like this

map.resources :recipes

The following URL works perfectly fine

http://localhost:3000/recipes/show/84/testing201
http://localhost:3000/recipes/edit/84/testing2010

However, when I say rake routes I get the following for the recipe controller

recipes GET    /recipes(.:format)                 {:controller=>"recipes", :action=>"index"}
             POST   /recipes(.:format)                 {:controller=>"recipes", :action=>"create"}
  new_recipe GET    /recipes/new(.:format)             {:controller=>"recipes", :action=>"new"}
 edit_recipe GET    /recipes/:id/edit(.:format)        {:controller=>"recipes", :action=>"edit"}
      recipe GET    /recipes/:id(.:format)             {:controller=>"recipes", :action=>"show"}
             PUT    /recipes/:id(.:format)             {:controller=>"recipes", :action=>"update"}
             DELETE /recipes/:id(.:format)             {:controller=>"recipes", :action=>"destroy"}

and at the bottom I see this

/:controller/:action/:id/:title    
/:controller/:action/:id           
/:controller/:action/:id(.:format) 

From the output it seems like the title is not applied to the recipe route but it is applied at a global level. How can I fix this, so the wildcard symbol (“:title” in “/:controller/:action/:id/:title”) is only applicable to the recipes?

Answer 1

You are mixing two different routing concepts. One is RESTful routes (go read about it on google) and the other is generic/general route. You should use just one of them. RESTful one is recommended (map.resources :recipes). But first you need to decide which one to use.

Plus this definition is wrong:

map.connect ':controller/:action/:id/:title', :controller => "recipes"

You have :controller variable in the routes and then you say that :controller should be bound to ‘recipes’. One way to fix it is this:

map.connect '/recipes/:action/:id', :controller => "recipes"

or better

map.connect '/recipes/:id/:action', :controller => "recipes"

and you’re getting closer to RESTful routes.

If you want the title in your routes, then go with named route coupled with RESTful resource. But don’t mix :id and :title in one route. Use just one parameter (or both combined but that’s another story).

map.resources :recipes, :except => [:show]
map.recipe '/recipe/:title', :controller => 'recipes', :action => 'show'

And you would probably need to override the to_param method in your Recipe model:

def Recipe < ActiveRecord::Base
  def to_param
     title
  end
end