Slugify is a Rails plugin that automatically converts an attribute into a pretty URL slug and assigns it to another attribute. Conversion happens in a before_validation filter or by manually calling the #slugify or #slugify! instance methods.
Internally, it uses ActiveSupport's #parameterize method and is multi-byte safe.
By default, slugify generates the slug from the :title attribute and assigns it to the :slug attribute:
class Page < ActiveRecord::Base
slugify
end
@page = Page.new :title => "Yay Hooray"
@page.slugify
@page.slug # -> "yay-hooray"
Both fields can be overridden:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
slugify :name, :to => :permalink
end
@user = User.new :name => "Fox Mulder"
@user.slugify
@user.permalink # -> "fox-mulder"
Slugify will only assign a slug if the :to attribute is blank. This is to prevent all the URLs from breaking every time the user changes a title. Continuing from the example above:
@user.name = "Dana Scully"
@user.slugify
@user.permalink # -> "fox-mulder"
To override, use the #slugify! instance method:
@user.name = "Dana Scully"
@user.slugify!
@user.permalink # -> "dana-scully"
or set the option in the DSL:
class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
slugify :title, :to => :permalink, :force => true
end
Slugify will automatically validate for presence, format, and uniqueness. It's easy to scope the uniqueness constraint:
class Page < ActiveRecord::Base
slugify :title, :scope => :section_id
end
or turn the constrain off:
class BlogPost < ActiveRecord::Base
slugify :title, :unique => false
end
To include the id in the slug, do it in the #to_param method:
class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
slugify
def to_param
"#{id}-#{slug}"
end
end
Bonus! If you include the id first, you can pass the whole slug into #find and it'll Just Work™:
Book.create(:title => "The Stand")
@book = Book.find("1-the-stand")
@book.title # -> "The Stand"
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Version 2, December 2004
Copyright (C) 2010 Chris Jones
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