Pretty Stack Overflow-style resource URLs in Rails 5

May 27, 2017 in code

Stack Overflow uses routes with the format /:id/:title for questions like this one, which I find to be more memorable than simply a terse ID. I’ve decided that I want this for my new project, a rewrite of this blog in Ruby on Rails 5. Small changes to a model and its routes are required to permit this:

Routes

A post on Stack Overflow led me to a GitHub issue which outlined breaking changes in the to_param object method and a need to glob the route.

get '/ponies/*id', to: 'ponies#show', as: :pony

Model

Add your custom slug:

class Pony < ApplicationRecord
  def to_param
    "#{id}/#{name.parameterize}"
  end
end

And that’s it, simple as.

Ben Sheldon May 16, 2018 #

This is a really helpful post!

I have since discovered a slightly different way to generate Stack Overflow URLs that has a few benefits:

I don’t have to parse the id out from the slugged title
It uses Rails 5.1’s resolve method which can construct even more complicated urls (if necessary)
The update and delete routes still work by maintaining DELETE ponies/:id

Here’s the method I’m now using:

# routes.rb

resources :ponies do
  get '(/:name)', action: :show, as: '', on: :member, constraints: -> (req) { req.params[:name] != 'edit' }
end

direct :ponies do |model|
  { action: :show, id: model.id, slug: model.name.parameterize }
end

…which generate these routes:

     pony GET    /ponies/:id(/:name)(.:format)                                                            ponies#show
   ponies GET    /ponies(.:format)          ponies#index
          POST   /ponies(.:format)          ponies#create
 new_pony GET    /ponies/new(.:format)      ponies#new
edit_pony GET    /ponies/:id/edit(.:format) ponies#edit
          GET    /ponies/:id(.:format)      ponies#show
          PATCH  /ponies/:id(.:format)      ponies#update
          PUT    /ponies/:id(.:format)      ponies#update
          DELETE /ponies/:id(.:format)      ponies#destroy

Mark Grealish May 19, 2018 #

Ben I edited your comment slightly for formatting. That looks like a pretty awesome solution for the problem! Shows there’s more than way to climb a cliff.

Routes

Model

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