Question about URL friendly links

Question

Hi,

I am trying to get my urls to look like this:

example.com/posts/id_of_post/title_of_post

I have this in my controller:

match ':controller/:id/:link', :controller => 'posts', :action => 'show'

Say I have a list of posts.. how can I link to them?

<%= link_to 'Show', post %>

Just gives the usual /posts/id

On another note, at the minute I am making a url-friendly link when a post is created and storing it in the database. Would it be better to create on the fly? Is that possible/better?

I saw this in an answer to another question:

def to_param
  normalized_name = title.gsub(' ', '-').gsub(/[^a-zA-Z0-9\_\-\.]/, '')
  "#{self.id}-#{normalized_name}"
end

That would work if I could change the - to a /. Possible?

Answer 1

I recommend just doing this instead of the gsub stuff:

def to_param
  "#{self.id}-#{title.parameterize}"
end

Downside is that if the title changes, the URL changes. Which is a downer.

So a lot of implementations will do

before_create :permanize

def permanize
  permalink = title.parameterize
end

def to_param
  "#{self.id}-#{permalink}"
end

Answer 2

This is what I did:

I added this to my post#create:

@post.link = (@post.title.parameterize)

I will give the user the option to edit the title for up to 5 mins after posting.

My route:

match "/posts/:id/:link" => "posts#show", :as => "story"

and my index view for posts

<%= link_to 'Show', story_url(post, post.link) %>