Question

This might sound like a trivial question, but it is rather important for consumer facing apps

What is the easiest way and most scalable way to map the scary mongo id onto a id that is friendly?

xx.com/posts/4d371056183b5e09b20001f9

TO

xx.com/posts/a

M

Answer 1

Define a friendly unique field (like a slug) on your collection, index it, on your model, define to_param to return it:

def to_param
  slug
end

Then in your finders, find by slug rather than ID:

@post = Post.where(:slug => params[:id].to_s).first

This will let you treat slugs as your effective PK for the purposes of resource interaction, and they’re a lot prettier.