Question

What is a better way to do this?

Ideally using a URI parsing class of some sort, rather than relying on my own regex

  url = "http://example.com"  //or "http://example.com?after=111"

  next_url = url.gsub(/after=\d+/,"666")
  if !next_url.eql?(url)
    if (new2.include?('?') == false)
      next_url = url + "?after=666"
    else
      next_url = url + "&after=666"
    end                                                                                                                                                                                        
  end                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
  puts next_url    

Answer 1

I recommend using the Addressable gem when you are taking URLs apart or putting them together. It’s very comprehensive, and has query_values(options = {}) and query_values=(new_query_values) to extract all the query components into a hash, or to rebuild it from a hash. It will also handle decoding and encoding the parameters as needed, things that URI will not do for you.