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Some [hopefully] useful extensions to Ruby’s String class. It is made up of three libraries: ActsAsUrl, Unidecoder, and StringExtensions.

NOTE: Stringex 2.0 [and beyond] drops support for Rails 2. If you need support for that version, use 1.5.1 instead.

ActsAsUrl¶ ↑

NOTE: You can now require ‘stringex_lite’ instead of ‘stringex’ and skip loading ActsAsUrl functionality if you don’t need it.

This library is designed to create URI-friendly representations of an attribute, for use in generating urls from your attributes. Basic usage is just calling the method:

# Inside your model
acts_as_url :title

which will populate the url attribute on the object with the converted contents of the title attribute. acts_as_url takes the following options:

:url_attribute: The name of the attribute to use for storing the generated url string. Default is :url
:scope: The name of model attribute to scope unique urls to. There is no default here.
:only_when_blank: If set to true, the url generation will only happen when :url_attribute is blank. Default is false (meaning url generation will happen always).
:sync_url: If set to true, the url field will be updated when changes are made to the attribute it is based on. Default is false.
:allow_slash: If set to true, the url field will not convert slashes. Default is false.
:allow_duplicates: If set to true, unique urls will not be enforced. Default is false. NOTE: This is strongly not recommended if you are routing solely on the generated slug as you will no longer be guaranteed to lookup the expected record based on a duplicate slug.
:limit: If set, will limit length of url generated. Default is nil.
:truncate_words: Used with :limit. If set to false, the url will be truncated to the last whole word before the limit was reached. Default is true.
:blacklist: List of urls that should not be allowed. Default is %w{new} [which avoids confusion on urls like /documents/new].
:blacklist_policy: Proc or lambda defining new naming behavior when blacklisted urls are encountered. Default converts /documents/new to /documents/new-document.

In order to use the generated url attribute, you will probably want to override to_param like so, in your Model:

# Inside your model
def to_param
  url # or whatever you set :url_attribute to
end

Routing called via named routes like foo_path(@foo) will automatically use the url. In your controllers you will need to call Foo.find_by_url(params[:id]) instead of the regular find. Don’t look for params[:url] unless you set it explicitly in the routing, to_param will generate params[:id].

Note that if you add acts_as_url to an existing model, the url database column will initially be blank. To set this column for your existing instances, you can use the initialize_urls method. So if your class is Post, just say Post.initialize_urls.

Unlike other permalink solutions, ActsAsUrl doesn’t rely on Iconv (which is inconsistent across platforms and doesn’t provide great transliteration as is) but instead uses a transliteration scheme (see the code for Unidecoder) which produces much better results for Unicode characters. It also mixes in some custom helpers to translate common characters into a more URI-friendly format rather than just dump them completely. Examples:

# A simple prelude
"simple English".to_url => "simple-english"
"it's nothing at all".to_url => "its-nothing-at-all"
"rock & roll".to_url => "rock-and-roll"

# Let's show off
"$12 worth of Ruby power".to_url => "12-dollars-worth-of-ruby-power"
"10% off if you act now".to_url => "10-percent-off-if-you-act-now"

# You dont EVEN wanna rely on Iconv for this next part
"kick it en Français".to_url => "kick-it-en-francais"
"rock it Español style".to_url => "rock-it-espanol-style"
"tell your readers 你好".to_url => "tell-your-readers-ni-hao"

Compare those results with the ones produced on my Intel Mac by a leading permalink plugin:

"simple English" # => "simple-english"
"it's nothing at all" # => "it-s-nothing-at-all"
"rock & roll" # => "rock-roll"

"$12 worth of Ruby power" # => "12-worth-of-ruby-power"
"10% off if you act now" # => "10-off-if-you-act-now"

"kick it en Français" # => "kick-it-en-francais"
"rock it Español style" # => "rock-it-espan-ol-style"
"tell your readers 你好" # => "tell-your-readers"

Not so great, actually.

Note: No offense is intended to the author of whatever plugins might produce such results. It’s not your faults Iconv sucks.

Unidecoder¶ ↑

This library converts Unicode [and accented ASCII] characters to their plain-text ASCII equivalents. This is a port of Perl’s Unidecode and provides eminently superior and more reliable results than Iconv. (Seriously, Iconv… A plague on both your houses! [sic])

You may require only the unidecoder (and its dependent localization) via

require "stringex/unidecoder"

You probably won’t ever need to run Unidecoder by itself. Thus, you probably would want to add String#to_ascii which wraps all of Unidecoder’s functionality, by requiring:

require "stringex/core_ext"

For anyone interested, details of the implementation can be read about in the original implementation of Text::Unidecode. Extensive examples can be found in the tests.

StringExtensions¶ ↑

A small collection of extensions on Ruby’s String class. Please see the documentation for StringExtensions module for more information. There’s not much to explain about them really.

Localization¶ ↑

With Stringex version 2.0 and higher, you can localize the different conversions in Stringex. Read more here. If you add a new language, please submit a pull request so we can make it available to other users also.

Ruby on Rails Usage¶ ↑

When using Stringex with Ruby on Rails, you automatically get built-in translations for miscellaneous characters, HTML entities, and vulgar fractions. You can see Stringex’s standard translations here.

Currently, built-in translations are available for the following languages:

* English (en)
* Danish (da)
* Swedish (sv)
* Dutch (nl)
* German (de)
* Polish (pl)
* Portuguese Brazilian (pt-BR)
* Russian (ru)

You can easily add your own or customize the built-in translations - read here. If you add a new language, please submit a pull request so we can make it available to other users also.

If you don’t want to use the Stringex built-in translations, you can force Stringex to use English (or another language), regardless what is in your I18n.locale. In an initializer, e.g. config/initializers/stringex.rb:

Stringex::Localization.locale = :en

CanCan Usage Note¶ ↑

You’ll need to add a :find_by => :url to your load_and_authorize_resource. Here’s an example:

load_and_authorize_resource :class => "Whatever", :message => "Not authorized", :find_by => :url

Thanks & Acknowledgements¶ ↑

If it’s not obvious, some of the code for ActsAsUrl is based on Rick Olsen’s permalink_fu plugin. Unidecoder is a Ruby port of Sean Burke’s Text::Unidecode module for Perl. And, finally, the bulk of strip_html_tags in StringExtensions was stolen from Tobias Lütke’s Regex in Typo.

GIANT thanks to the many contributors who have helped make Stringex better and better: github.com/rsl/stringex/contributors

rpossan/stringex