Rails - Jun 2006 - Opinions on catch-all routing?

I remember reading somewhere a tip on improving your search engine 
ranking, by forming URLs that included relevant text, e.g. 
www.domain.com/article/man_eats_hat. In the rails app that I''m writing,
I''ve noticed I can set this up very easily by appending the post title 
(after downcase.split.join(''_'')) to the post link. So,
blog.com/posts/4
can easily also be blog.com/posts/4/title_of_blog, with the following 
added to config/routes.rb:

map.connect '':controller/:action/:id/*anything''

Of course this also means that blog.com/posts/4/anything_else points to 
the same place, and I was wondering if this could be considered as bad 
practice.

Any thoughts?

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> map.connect '':controller/:action/:id/*anything''
> Of course this also means that blog.com/posts/4/anything_else points to 
>the same place, and I was wondering if this could be considered as bad 
>practice.
You could just have a url version of your blog title in the db.  You can 
then just have your urls like this:
/posts/my_blog_title/ rather than including the id.

I''ve written a plugin called ''url_column'' that will
maintain a url in
the table from a specified column automatically on saves and updates.

For example, you can do:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  url_column :post_url, :from => :title
end

Whenever you save or create a post it''ll automatically
''urlify'' the post
title and update the post_url column.

If you''re interested, i''ll post it up somewhere.

Hope that helps!

Steve

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On 6/9/06, Stephen Bartholomew <steve@2404.co.uk>
wrote:
> > map.connect '':controller/:action/:id/*anything''
>
> > Of course this also means that blog.com/posts/4/anything_else points
to
> >the same place, and I was wondering if this could be considered as bad
> >practice.
> You could just have a url version of your blog title in the db.  You can
> then just have your urls like this:
> /posts/my_blog_title/ rather than including the id.
>
> I''ve written a plugin called ''url_column'' that
will maintain a url in
> the table from a specified column automatically on saves and updates.
>
> For example, you can do:
>
> class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
>   url_column :post_url, :from => :title
> end
>
> Whenever you save or create a post it''ll automatically
''urlify'' the post
> title and update the post_url column.
>
> If you''re interested, i''ll post it up somewhere.
>
> Hope that helps!
>
Please post it. That sounds interesting.

Hey All,

I''ve just packaged up a small plugin i wrote to manage nice urls from a
model attribute.

It''s available for download here: 
http://www.2404.co.uk/index.php?path=articles/view.php&articleId=23

I can only apologise in advance for my dodgy blog - don''t let the 
horrible url and php scare you off :0)

This is a very ''new'' plugin so do have a play and let me know
the
results.

Oh and if it''s deemed worthy, i''d like to find a nicer place
for it to
live - my blog is not really a great advert for a ''nice url''
plugin.

Cheers!

Steve

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On 6/19/06, Stephen Bartholomew <steve@curve21.com>
wrote:
> Hey All,
>
> I''ve just packaged up a small plugin i wrote to manage nice urls
from a
> model attribute.
>
> It''s available for download here:
> http://www.2404.co.uk/index.php?path=articles/view.php&articleId=23
>
> I can only apologise in advance for my dodgy blog - don''t let the
> horrible url and php scare you off :0)
>
> This is a very ''new'' plugin so do have a play and let me
know the
> results.
>
> Oh and if it''s deemed worthy, i''d like to find a nicer
place for it to
> live - my blog is not really a great advert for a ''nice
url'' plugin.
>
Very cool. Thanks for sharing this.

Hi Stephen,

Very nice.  My only suggestion would be to call it
permalink_column instead of url_column.  

Brent

--- Stephen Bartholomew <steve@curve21.com> wrote:
> Hey All,
> 
> I''ve just packaged up a small plugin i wrote to
> manage nice urls from a 
> model attribute.
> 
> It''s available for download here: 
>
http://www.2404.co.uk/index.php?path=articles/view.php&articleId=23
> 
> I can only apologise in advance for my dodgy blog -
> don''t let the 
> horrible url and php scare you off :0)
> 
> This is a very ''new'' plugin so do have a play and
> let me know the 
> results.
> 
> Oh and if it''s deemed worthy, i''d like to find a
> nicer place for it to 
> live - my blog is not really a great advert for a
> ''nice url'' plugin.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Steve
> 
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
> 

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On Jun 19, 2006, at 16:37, Stephen Bartholomew wrote:
> Hey All,
>
> I''ve just packaged up a small plugin i wrote to manage nice urls  
> from a
> model attribute.
>
> It''s available for download here:
> http://www.2404.co.uk/index.php?path=articles/view.php&articleId=23
>
> I can only apologise in advance for my dodgy blog - don''t let the
> horrible url and php scare you off :0)
>
> This is a very ''new'' plugin so do have a play and let me
know the
> results.
>
> Oh and if it''s deemed worthy, i''d like to find a nicer
place for it to
> live - my blog is not really a great advert for a ''nice
url'' plugin.
Nice! Does it handle non-ASCII in UTF-8?

-- fxn

> Very nice.  My only suggestion would be to call it
> permalink_column instead of url_column.
Hmm.. good sugguestion - but it''s not really specifically for permenant
links.  It''ll will be updated if, say, the title of the page changes.

In that respect it can be used for categories, pages, products - 
whatever.

Steve


-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> Nice! Does it handle non-ASCII in UTF-8?
It uses basic Ruby replaces.  I''ve not really tried it with anything 
more complex than the examples and tests - try it out and let me know 
:0)

Steve

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Posted at http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/url_column :)

--
Benjamin Curtis
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ -- Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ -- Resources for the Rails community



On Jun 19, 2006, at 7:37 AM, Stephen Bartholomew wrote:
> Hey All,
>
> I''ve just packaged up a small plugin i wrote to manage nice urls  
> from a
> model attribute.
>
> It''s available for download here:
> http://www.2404.co.uk/index.php?path=articles/view.php&articleId=23
>
> I can only apologise in advance for my dodgy blog - don''t let the
> horrible url and php scare you off :0)
>
> This is a very ''new'' plugin so do have a play and let me
know the
> results.
>
> Oh and if it''s deemed worthy, i''d like to find a nicer
place for it to
> live - my blog is not really a great advert for a ''nice
url'' plugin.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Steve
>
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails