Question

This is a fairly open-ended question, and I’m just looking for the best possible avenue.

Users can post links with titles. And I want my URL’s for SEO purposes to display those titles. Much in the same way I believe stackoverflow works.

So if the title is “My foobar just made out with my cat”

I would like the URL to be : www.website.com/posts/My-foobar-just-made-out-with-my-cat

Any ideas?

Thanks so much in advance!!

Answer 1

I used this in an old Rails 2.x app. There may be a better approach to scrubbing the title…

(goes in your model)

def to_param
  seo_uri
end

def seo_uri
  "#{self.id}-#{self.title.gsub(/[^a-z0-9]+/i, '-').gsub(/-{2}/, '-').gsub(/-$/, '')}"
end

Hope this helps!

UPDATE

Comments on this answer indicated there is a new method available for Rails 3 users: #parameterize. The Rails API document for this method shows how it should be used (cut-n-paste):

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

@person = Person.find(1)
# => #<Person id: 1, name: "Donald E. Knuth">

<%= link_to(@person.name, person_path %>
# => <a href="/person/1-donald-e-knuth">Donald E. Knuth</a>