jcasimir

Friendly URLs

By default, Rails applications build URLs based on the primary key -- the id column from the database. Imagine we have a Person model and associated controller. We have a person record for Bob Martin that has id number 6. The URL for his show page would be:

/people/6

But, for aesthetic or SEO purposes, we want Bob's name in the URL. The last segment, the 6 here, is called the "slug". Let's look at a few ways to implement better slugs.

bgreenlee

# mysql-style output for an array of ActiveRecord objects
#
# Usage:
#   report(records)  # displays report with all fields
#   report(records, :field1, :field2, ...) # displays report with given fields
#
# Example:
# >> report(records, :id, :amount, :created_at)
# +------+-----------+--------------------------------+
# | id   | amount    | created_at                     |