Question

I’m in the process of learning RoR, and I’m liking everything that I’m discovering so far. I’m switching over from the PHP-based CodeIgniter framework, and I have a problem in using the redirect_to method.

I’ve defined a basic Users model which I use to handle registration – data gets stored fine in the DB, but the problem is when redirecting after signing up a user to the system.

Basically, the profile page is of the following format: /users/:name/:id

I have a routes file defined as such:

resources :users
match '/users/:name/:id', :to => 'users#show'

And here is my create method

def create
  @title = "User creation"

  @user = User.new(params[:user])
  if @user.save
    info = { :name => @user.name, :id => @user.id }

    redirect_to info.merge(:action => "show")
  else
    @title = 'Sign Up'
    render 'new'
  end
end

However this will generate an url of the following format:

http://localhost:3000/users/27?name=Testing

When I’m actually looking for something like this:

http://localhost:3000/users/Testing/27

It just makes sense for me from a SEO point of view that a profile page URL look like that. I’ve been searching the inter-webs, but I only find solutions to different problems. I hope someone can help.

SOLVED
Both versions that were suggested by Ryan worked fine, and I decided to stick to the second one, since it feels more RESTful. I’ll just share the config I have right now – mind you, the User model may not be all that correct, but it’s the to_param function that’s important. Also, I’ve noticed that it doesn’t work if I make the function private – that makes sense, but I just thought that I’d share that for someone that may be running into that sort of problem.

Here’s my routes file:

resources :users

And here is my Users model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :name, :email

  email_regex = /\A[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-.]+\.[a-z]+\z/i

  validates :name, 
      :presence => true,
      :length => { :within => 5..50 }

  validates :email,
      :presence => true,
      :format => { :with => email_regex},
      :uniqueness => { :case_sensitive => false }

  def to_param
    "#{id}-#{name.parameterize}"
  end
end

And here’s my controller create function:

def create
  @title = "User creation"

  @user = User.new(params[:user])
  if @user.save
    redirect_to @user
  else
    @title = 'Sign Up'
    render 'new'
  end
end

Answer 1

Define your route like this:

get '/users/:name/:id', :to => 'users#show', :as => "user"

Then redirect to it using this helper:

redirect_to(user_path(@user.name, @user.id))

---

Alternatively, you could just stick with resources :users and not have to define your own route. The difference here is that your route would be something like /users/1-testing rather than users/1/testing, but the advantage is that you would be more Rails standard.

To do this, define a to_param method in your model, like this:

def to_param
  "#{id}-#{name.parameterize}
end

Then Rails will use the output of the to_param method in your routes.