68 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
68 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Rails, Resources and Permalinks"
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kind: article
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slug: rails-resources-and-permalinks
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created_at: 2007-04-12
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tags:
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- General
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- RubyOnRails
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- Features
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---
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There has been quite a bit of discussion about creating permalinks with a rails resource. In this article I will show you how to create permalinks for a resource named 'pages' without giving up on any of the resource goodness!
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<!--more-->
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Before I start I'll presume you have a page scaffold_resource setup in your rails application. Make sure you have at least the following fields in your page model:
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<pre lang="ruby">t.column :title, :string
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t.column :permalink, :string
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t.column :content, :text</pre>
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Okay, what you want is the permalink_fu plugin. This plugin greatly simplifies the act of generating a permalink from a title. Install it first:
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<pre lang="bash">$ cd railsapp
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$ ./script/plugin install http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins/permalink_fu/</pre>
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In your Page model you may now add the following line. This line will generate a permalink in the permalink attribute automatically, so you don't have to show the permalink field in any forms.
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<pre lang="ruby">has_permalink :title</pre>
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That's it for generating the appropriate permalink string in your database.
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Rails goodness has already provided you with the basic RESTful routes:
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<ul>
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<li>/pages</li>
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<li>/pages/123</li>
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<li>/pages/new</li>
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<li>/pages/123;edit</li>
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</ul>
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But what you really want, is something like:
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<ul>
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<li>/pages/perma-link-here</li>
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</ul>
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Notice that the permalink url is only a GET request and should not be used for editing or updating the page in question.
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Since using any other identifier than :id in a resource is madness, I create two new routes that will allow me to access permalinked pages. Not only that, but I do maintain the format option. Basically this means that you get three routes:
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<ul>
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<li>/page/perma-link-here</li>
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<li>/page/perma-link-here.html</li>
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<li>/page/perma-link-here.xml</li>
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</ul>
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Notice that I removed the 's' from 'pages' here. This is to avoid confusion with the resource 'pages'. But more on that later.
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Now in config/routes.rb add the following two lines:
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<pre lang="ruby">map.permalink 'page/:permalink', :controller => 'pages', :action => 'permalink'
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map.connect 'page/:permalink.:format', :controller => 'pages', :action => 'permalink', :format => nil</pre>
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The first line adds a named route to an action named 'permalink' in your PagesController. This gives you the ability to add peralink links easily:
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<pre lang="ruby">permalink_url(@page.permalink)</pre>
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The second link is unnamed, and allows you to specify a format like HTML or XML.
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The permalink action looks like this:
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<pre lang="ruby"># GET /page/perma-link
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# GET /page/permal-link.xml
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def permalink
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@page = Page.find_by_permalink(params[:permalink])
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respond_to do |format|
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format.html { render :action => 'show' }
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format.xml { render :xml => @page.to_xml }
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end
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end</pre>
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This special permalink action uses the same 'show' view as your resource.
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If you want to maintain the 'pages' part of the URL, that's possible. You'll have to write a condition that makes sure that the :permalink parameter is a string an not an integer (ID). This article does not cover this.
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You may now use permalinks for your pages! Congratulations. |