resource route with default parameter instead :id

Question

I have a route for one of my resources:

resources :categories

and I need to generate link to category with key property instead of id so I use this:

category_path(category, :id=>category.key)

which generates this

/categories/blah.1

where blah is desired key and 1 is undesired id. How can I awoid that dot with id any why it appears there?

Answer 1

One way to fix it permanently, which doesn't require you to have category_path(category, :id=>category.key) all the places in your views is that you can create an instance method in your Category class(app/models/category.rb):

def to_param
  key.try(:parameterize)
end

Basically, to_param is the method which is called in Rails at the time of generating a model object to URL. We've just overridden it here. Now, you don't have to write category_path(...), you can just do:

<%= link_to category.name, category %>

and it'll use key by default. Change category.name with your appropriate value which you want to show in the link, it was just an example.

Note: Make sure you always validate key attribute to be present and unique in your Category class, so that you don't run into invalid/no category being found in the controller at the time of find query.