Question

I have a web app made with Ruby On Rails. For now when I want to display an object I have to access the following page: http://mywebapp.com/object/1234 with 1234 the id of the object.

I would like to encode that object id and have the following result: http://mywebapp.com/object/5k (it is just an example).

How can it be done?

Many thanks,
Martin

Answer 1

All these converting methods are reversible, so IMHO if your object has some name or title or whatever, then the best way is adding a slug.
In such case add a new attribute :slug to your object, let automatically generate it’s value from object name (or something else) on the model:

class MyObject

  validates_format_of :slug, :with => /\A[a-z\-0-9]*\Z/
  before_validation :generate_slug, :on => :create    

  def generate_slug
    if self.slug.blank?
      slug = self.name.mb_chars.downcase.normalize(:kd).to_s.gsub(/-/, " ").squeeze(" ")
      slug = slug.gsub(/\s/, "-").gsub(/[^a-z\-0-9]/, "")

      current = 1
      self.slug = slug
      while true
        conflicts = MyObject.where("slug = ?", self.slug).count
        if conflicts != 0
          self.slug = "#{slug}-#{current}"
          current += 1
        else
          break
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

then the URL can be http://mywebapp.com/object/my_object_slug, because in action you find the object via this slug:

class MyObjectController

  def some_action
    my_object = MyObject.find_by_slug(params[:slug])

    ...

  end
end

Don’t forget modify routes.rb:

match "object/:slug", :to => "my_objects#some_action"