Question

Let’s say I have a Ruby on Rails blogging application with a Post model. By default you would be able to read posts by http://.../post/id. I’ve added a route

map.connect ':title', :controller => 'posts', :action => 'show'

that will accept http://.../title (titles are unique) and the controller will do a query for the title and display the page. However when I am now calling <%= link_to h(post.title), post %> in a view, Rails still gives me links of the type post/id.

Is it possible to get Rails to automatically create the pretty links for me in this case?

Answer 1

If you are willing to accept: http:/…/1234-title-text you can just do:

def to_param
  [id, title.parameterize].join("-")
end

AR::Base.find ignores the bit after the id, so it “just works”.

To make the /title go away, try naming your route:

map.post ':id', :controller => 'posts', :action => 'show', :conditions => {:id => /[0-9]+-.*/ }

Ensure this route appears after any map.resources :posts call.