make_permalink is a simple gem that allows you to easily create Permalinks (url-friendly-output) for methods in your objects. You don't need any database storage to make it work which is just awesome!

  class Post
    make_permalink :title
  end

  p = Post.create(:title => "Hello World!")
  p.permalink   # => "1-hello-world"

If you're using Rails and you want your URLs to have the Permalink and not only the id, just override the to_param method to your model:

  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    make_permalink :title

    def to_param
      permalink
    end
  end

To install make_permalink just add it to your Gemfile and run bundle install

gem 'make_permalink'

You can have a Permalink that won't change non-ascii.

:replace_non_ascii: If set to false non-ascii chars won't be replaced. Default is true

  class Post
    make_permalink :title, :replace_non_ascii => false
  end

  p = Post.create(:title => "Let's rock & roll")
  p.permalink   # => "1-let-s-rock-roll"

Notice that if you don't replace non-ascii chars the gem will try to convert the symbols to workds.

  # You will get this with the default behavior 
  p.permalink  # => "1-lets-rock-and-roll"

I don't really like to have the ID of the object on the Permalink, so I just added an option to remove it. Just call the method with :include_id => false and you're done! The problem with this is that querying would be much harder, since you don't have a permalink column in your database.

:include_id: is true by default but just change it to remove the id from the Permalink.

If you need to contact me about a bug or anythig, please open an issue.

Also, feel free to patch it as needed, every fix/refactoring/extension is more than welcome!

Nicolás Hock Isaza
@nhocki on Twitter
nhocki@gmail.com

Copyright (c) 2012 Nicolás Hock Isaza, released under the MIT license