Question

I`m looking to implement links that fit a certain format (seo purposes).

Here`s an example:

match '/activities-Palmdale-California', :to => 'explores#activity_by_city', :location=>'Palmdale-California'

Where the location changes for each city+state.

Is there I way to dynamically loop through an array of cities & states (predefined) in the routes file, without creating additional models etc. ?

Answer 1

You can have parameters in your routes, so something like the following should work:

match "/activities-:location", :to => 'explores#activity_by_city'

and the location should be sent to your controller action in params[:location]. If you want to limit the urls your application will accept to just the locations in a predefined array (we’ll call it ValidLocations), you can do it either in the route with the :constraints option:

match "/activities-:location", :to => 'explores#activity_by_city', :constraints => proc { |req| ValidLocations.include?(req.params[:location]) }

or in the controller:

def activity_by_city
  ...
  unless ValidLocations.include?(params[:location])
    flash[:error] = "Invalid location."
    redirect_to ...
    return
  end
  ...
end