Generates a URL slug based on a specific fields (e.g. title).

A url slug is a string derived from a specific field which can the be used in a URL. For instance, a page with the title My page would have a URL slug of my-page.

The slug is generated on save and create actions. If the field has an existing URL slug (like when editing an existing record) the URL slug is preserved.

URL slugs are unique within the specified scope (or all records if no scope is defined). If the slug already exists within the scope, -n is added (e.g. my-page-0, my-page-1, etc…

Installation

./script/plugin install http://code.dunae.ca/acts_as_slugable

Usage examples

In your target table, add a column to hold the URL slug.

With scope

  class Page < ActiveRecord::Base
    acts_as_slugable :source_column => :title, :target_column => :url_slug, :scope => :parent
  end

Without scope

  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    acts_as_slugable :source_column => :title, :target_column => :url_slug
  end

A sample link

  link_to @page.title, :action => 'show', :url_slug => @page.url_slug

Testing

The unit tests for this plugin use an in-memory sqlite3 database (http://www.sqlite.org/).

To execute the unit tests run the default rake task (rake). To execute the unit tests but preserve to debug log run rake test.

Credits

Created by Alex Dunae (dunae.ca), 2006-07