Question

I have red docs on friendly_id for rails. It’s easy: you set a certain attribute to be the slug.

example.com/username

User has_one profile
Profile belongs_to User

So you see my dilemma. I have no column username in the profile model. How can I link the user model, username field so that I can do example.com/username with friendly_id?

Surely this is relatively simple.

Answer 1

You can use a “catch-all” route at the end of your routes file:

map.connect ':username', :controller => 'profiles', :action => 'show' (this is for Rails 2.3)

And in the profiles controller, method show you check if there is a user with that username, and if it belongs to the current profile

def show
  if User.find_by_username(params[:username])
    if @current_user == User.find_by_username(params[:username])  
     # @profile = @current_user.profile
     # render projects#show view 
    else
     # flash error message, because the current user tries to access other users profile (in case your app doesn't allow it)
  else
    # render page not found error 
  end
end

I had a similar situation for a projects model, from projects/id => /project_name.
It is a bit easier in your case because in the db you have unique usernames.
Ah, and no extra gems are involved.