routing - How to implement "short" nested vanity urls in rails?

Question

I understand how to create a vanity URL in Rails in order to translate http://mysite.com/forum/1 into http://mysite.com/some-forum-name

But I'd like to take it a step further and get the following working (if it is possible at all):

Instead of: http://mysite.com/forum/1/board/99/thread/321

I'd like in the first step to get to something like this: http://mysite.com/1/99/321

and ultimately have it like http://mysite.com/some-forum-name/some-board-name/this-is-the-thread-subject.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

To have this work "nicely" with the Rails URL helpers you have to override to_param in your model:

def to_param
  permalink
end

Where permalink is generated by perhaps a before_save

before_save :set_permalink

def set_permalink
  self.permalink = title.parameterize
end

The reason you create a permalink is because, eventually, maybe, potentially, you'll have a title that is not URL friendly. That is where parameterize comes in.

Now, as for finding those posts based on what permalink is you can either go the easy route or the hard route.

Easy route

Define to_param slightly differently:

def to_param
  id.to_s + permalink
end

Continue using Forum.find(params[:id]) where params[:id] would be something such as 1-my-awesome-forum. Why does this still work? Well, Rails will call to_i on the argument passed to find, and calling to_i on that string will return simply 1.

Hard route

Leave to_param the same. Resort to using find_by_permalink in your controllers, using params[:id] which is passed in form the routes:

Model.find_by_permalink(params[:id])

Now for the fun part

Now you want to take the resource out of the URL. Well, it's a Sisyphean approach. Sure you could stop using the routing helpers Ruby on Rails provides such as map.resources and define them using map.connect but is it really worth that much gain? What "special super powers" does it grant you? None, I'm afraid.

But still if you wanted to do that, here's a great place to start from:

get ':forum_id/:board_id/:topic_id', :to => "topics#show", :as => "forum_board_topic"