Effective Slugs

This gem is no longer actively maintained

Automatically generate URL-appropriate slugs when saving a record.

Also overrides ActiveRecord's .find() method to accept the slug, or an id as the parameter.

Rails 3.2.x and Rails 4.

Add to Gemfile:

gem 'effective_slugs'

Run the bundle command to install it:

bundle install

(optional) If you want control over any excluded slugs, run the generator:

rails generate effective_slugs:install

The generator will install an initializer which describes all configuration options.

Add the mixin to an existing model:

class Post
  acts_as_sluggable
end

Then create a migration to add the :slug column to the model. As we're doing lookups on this column, a database index makes a lot of sense too:

rails generate migration add_slug_to_post slug:string:index

which will create a migration something like:

class AddSlugToPost < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    add_column :posts, :slug, :string
    add_index :posts, :slug
  end
end

Then collect the slug field with your object's form. The below example will not be displayed on a #new but it will on #edit or if the slug is in error.

- if f.object.persisted? || f.object.errors.include?(:slug)
  - current_url = (post_path(f.object) rescue nil)
  = f.input :slug, hint: "The slug controls this post's internet address. Be careful, changing the slug will break links that other websites may have to the old address.<br>#{('This post is currently reachable via ' + link_to(current_url.gsub(f.object.slug, '<strong>' + f.object.slug + '</strong>').html_safe, current_url)) if current_url }".html_safe

and include the permitted param within your controller:

def permitted_params
  params.require(:post).permit(:slug)
end

When saving a record that does not have a slug, a slug will be automatically generated and assigned.

Tweak the behavior by adding the following instance method to the model:

def should_generate_new_slug?
  slug.blank?
end

The slug is generated based on an object's slug_source method, which can also be overridden by adding the following to the model:

def slug_source
  return title if self.respond_to?(:title)
  return name if self.respond_to?(:name)
  to_s
end

There is also the idea of excluded slugs. Every model in a rails application has its default route automatically excluded. So if you have a model called Event, with its corresponding 'events' table, the /events slug will be unavailable.

You can add additional excluded slugs in the generated config file.

Any slug conflicts will be resolved by appending a -1, -2, etc to the slug.

post = Post.create(:title => 'My First Post')
post.id
  => 1
post.slug
  => 'my-first-post'

The .find() ActiveRecord method is overridden so the following are equivelant:

Post.find('my-first-post')
Post.find(1)
Post.where(:slug => 'my-first-post').first

MIT License. Copyright Code and Effect Inc.

Some of the code in this gem was inspired by an old version of FriendlyId (https://github.com/FriendlyId/friendly_id)

The test suite for this gem is unfortunately not yet complete.

Run tests by:

rake spec

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Bonus points for test coverage
6. Create new Pull Request