I have several resources and I want to somehow have a :lang parameter in the header. So /en/posts/ would direct to posts_controller/index with params[:lang] == en.
How is this usually done? It looks ugly to have to add ?lang=en on every link and feel very un-railsy.
I think you know what I'm talking about even if I'm not very clear, what is the norm here?
One way of doing it would be:
map.resources :yourresources, :path_prefix => '/:lang'
You can also add language parameter filter:
map.resources :yourresources, :path_prefix => '/:lang', :lang => /(en|de|jp)/
Seems like the newest feature scheduled for Rails 2.3 is right up your alley: http://afreshcup.com/2009/02/01/rails-23-localized-views/
Aren't you supposed to eschew routes entirely, and set language based on the browser's HTTP Accept-Language header? See Here.
I'd imagine you should give your users an option to change their language, and then store that value in a cookie, which could then be pulled out in a before_filter.
Why do this? Well, "HTTP best practice" states that each resource should have one URI. An article is still the same article, whether it's in spanish or english, so should have the same URI. site.com/en/article and site.com/es/article are clearly not the same URI, which violates this principle