Question

I recently changed some URLs in my Rails app and am curious if I’m better off using routes + controllers + redirect_to to forward the old URLs, or just use .htaccess with Apache’s mod_rewrite?

I’m using Apache + Passenger so htaccess files work, but was curious if there was a standard for this sort of thing.

FWIW, the URLs were changed from this: http://example.com/user/joeschmoe

to this: http://example.com/joeschmoe

Answer 1

Using mod_rewrite will undoubtedly give the best performance because the request won’t even touch Rails. However, there is a third way if you find mod_rewrite to be a bit of a pain to get working—as I do—and a maintenance burden.

Refraction is Rack middleware designed to replace mod_rewrite. It lets you write your rewrite rules using good old readable Ruby code and it’s still faster than using Rails itself for the task.