Rails routes with :name instead of :id url parameters

Question

I have a controller named \'companies\' and rather than the urls for each company being denoted with an :id I\'d like to have the url use their :name such as: url/comp

Answer 1

Honestly, I would just overwrite the to_param in the Model. This will allow company_path helpers to work correctly.

Note: I would create a separate slug column for complex name, but that's just me. This is the simple case.

class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
  def to_param
    name
  end
end

Then change my routes param for readability.

# The param option may only be in Rails 4+,
# if so just use params[:id] in the controller
resources :companies, param: :name

Finally in my Controller I need to look it up the right way.

class CompaniesController < ApplicationController
  def show
    # Rails 4.0+
    @company = Company.find_by(name: params[:name])
    # Rails < 4.0
    @company = Company.find_by_name(params[:name])
  end
end