Rails - Apr 2005 - Routes, url_for and such

Hullo!

I have the following route:

  map.connect ''users/:login'', :controller =>
''users'', :action => ''view''

When I enter or manually generate a URL like "/users/hendrik", it
works as expected. However, anything involving url_for :login =>
''hendrik'' (like link_to, etc.) generates URLs like
"/?login=hendrik".
Did I horribly misunderstand something, or just stumble upon some
weird bug?

Interestingly enough, url_for spits out URLs correctly when I change
the route to this:

  map.connect ''users/:login'', :controller =>
''topics''

(''topics'' being another controller). Now the generated URLs
are
correct, but obviously the route itself is not the one I want.

Just in case, here''s my complete list of routes:

  map.connect '''', :controller => ''topics''
  map.connect ''users/:login'', :controller =>
''users'', :action => ''view''
  map.connect '':controller/service.wsdl'', :action =>
''wsdl''
  map.connect '':controller/:action/:id''

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Hendrik

> Did I horribly misunderstand something, or just stumble upon some
> weird bug?
It seems the former was the case, as I misunderstood what makes Routes
tick. I thought Routes would, when asked to generate a URL, pick the
first route that matches the supplied parameters -- so since I only
gave a :login, it would pick the route only requiring a :login.
However, this is not the case; Routes picks the URL for which *all*
parameters are present. Since I was forwarding to :controller =>
''users'' and :action => ''view'', the route
was picked by url_to once I
also supplied the parameters :controller and :action (with the same
values as specified in the route destination).

This of course makes sense when you think about what Routes'' job
really is. (It''s not generating fancy URLs for AR objects. :b)

Thanks anyway,
Hendrik