Abstraction of word-based slugs for URLs, w/ or w/o leading numeric IDs.

• Using Rails 3

gem "galetahub-salty_slugs"

• Using Rails 2.1+

./script/plugin install git://github.com/norbauer/salty_slugs.git

• SaltySlugs defaults to title as the source_column, slug as the slug_column, and prepends the model ID. Upon creating/updating a record, the plugin will sluggify the source_column when the slug_column is empty, otherwise it will sluggify the slug_column unless the slug_sync option is set to true (defaults to false).

 
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_slug
end
 
post = Post.create(:title => "Do Not Mix Slugs and Salt!")
@post.to_param
=> '23-do-not-mix-slugs-and-salt'

• You can also overwrite the defaults

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_slug :source_column => :name, :slug_column => :permalink, :prepend_id => false
end
 
@product = Product.create(:name => "Salt and Pepper Shaker")
@product.to_param
=> 'salt-and-pepper-shaker'

• Use the slugged_find class method in your controllers, smart enough to modify the search conditions if prepending ID is found or not. slugged_find is capable of accepting standard ActiveRecord::Base#find options as a second parameter. If no records are found, ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound is raised to match behavior of ActiveRecord::Base#find.

class PostsController < ApplicationController

   def show
     @post = Post.slugged_find(params[:id])
     # or optionally with an eager-load
     @post_with_author = Post.slugged_find(params[:id], :include => :author)
   # catch exceptions if post is not found
   rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
     flash[:error] = "Post not found"
     redirect_to :action => :index
   end
   
end

• If the sync_slug option is set to true, the source_column will always be sluggified upon updating the record. This means that the slug will not be able to be manually edited, but will always be synchronized to the source_column.

• Add a word/regexp blacklist, so that they are sliced out of a string when sluggified (for example to remove .com, .net, etc)

Copyright (c) 2008 Norbauer Inc, released under the MIT license
Written by Jonathan Dance and Jose Fernandez