Nested routing in Ruby on Rails

Question

My model class is:

class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_nested_set
  has_many :children, :foreign_key => "parent_id", :class_name => 'Category'
  belongs_to :parent, :foreign_key => "parent_id", :class_name => 'Category' 


  def to_param
    slug
  end
end

Is it possible to have such recursive route like this: /root_category_slug/child_category_slug/child_of_a_child_category_slug ... and so one

Thank you for any help :)

Answer 1

It's not easy (read: I don't know how to do it) and it's not advised. Imagine if you have 10 categories, you do not want the url to be /categorya/categoryb/categoryc/categoryd/categorye/categoryf/categoryg/categoryh/categoryi/categoryj.

Perhaps a maximum level of 3 would grant you the power you desire, without polluting the URL?

Answer 2

I doubt it, and it's not a good idea. Rails Route mapping code is complex enough without having to dynamically try to encode & decode (possibly) infinite route strings.

Answer 3

You can do that with regular routes and Route Globbing, so for example,

map.connect 'categories/*slugs', :controller => 'categories', :action => 'show_deeply_nested_category'

Then in your controller

def show_deeply_nested_category
  do_something = params[:slugs]  # contains an array of the path segments
end

However, note that nested resource routing more than one level deep isn't recommended.