Question

I have a model object called ‘Problem’ and I want to be able to call its the ‘show’ action using the URL /problems/PROBLEM_NAME.

I think the way to go about this is to change it so the primary_key is no longer the default integer id, instead I want it to be a string of letters.

I have tried to rails g model problem problem_name:primary_key problem_text:text
but I get the obvious error about having multiple primary keys.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I guess in your routes you have:

 resources :problems

Before the line with resources :problems, in your routes.rb file add this

 match "problems/:problem_name" => "problems#show"

After you added the new show route, in your problems controller, in the show action, instead of doing

 @problem = Problem.find(params[:id])

you use now

 @problem = Problem.find_by_name(params[:problem_name])    

Doing it this way, you don’t have to modify your database