Question

When the user of my application creates a new page, she is asked to enter a ‘Page Title’ among other details. (e.g. she entered: “Page Title by Megan”)
The application saves the instance into db.

Now my requirement is that when anyone tries to access that page, the URL should be like:

http://www.websitename.com/pages/page-title-by-megan

I understand that with Spring MVC I can easily get the part “page-title-by-megan” by using something like:

@RequestMapping("/pages/{pageTitle}")
public String getPage(@PathVariable String pageTitle, Model model) {
    List<Pages> pages = pageService.getPages(pageTitle);
    model.addAttribute("pages", pages);
    return "pages";
}

But the problem is

Q1: To retrieve the relevant page, I need to store pageTitle “page-title-by-megan” along with the actual data in the DB? Is that the only trick to do this? Or there’s a better way?

Q2: If that’s the only way, how to effectively form a string like “page-title-by-megan” from “Page Title by Megan”? Again, is there a better approach?

Kindly guide. I would be very thankful.

Answer 1

Q1:
I think the only way is to store url to database as you said, with a unique restriction.

Q2:
Assuming pageTitle contains the title entered by user, use this in your controller when submit is done:

String transformedPageTitle = pageTitle.toLowerCase().replace(" ", "-");