Rails polymorphic url generation sucks. Here's something better.

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If you've ever written a rails app with a lot of polymorphic resources, you've probably noticed that generating urls for your polymorphic routes is a real pain. In edge rails, some of the problems have been solved by the new polymorphic url methods. Unfortunately, those solutions are both inadequate, and "not recommended for use by end users" (see DHH's comment at the bottom). The problem is that if you want to use the same views and controller code without a lot of ugly conditionals to generate your urls, you're out of luck.

The Problem

## routes.rb

map.resources :photos
map.resources :users, :has_many => :photos
map.resources :tags, :has_many => :photos

## photos_controller.rb

class PhotosController
  ## in the create method
  wants.html { redirect_to url_for(url_helper_params) } # I know DHH doesn't want us to use this, but how else can I get this effect?

  ## in the destroy method
  wants.html { redirect_to photos_url } # unfortunately, this will drop any parent paths we may have
                                        # a user who called DELETE /users/james/photos/1 ends up at /photos instead of /users/james/photos)

  private
    # Note: I actually use a modification to make_resourceful to do this far more cleanly, but wanted to be as complete as possible in this example.
    def parent_object
      case
        when params[:user_id] then User.find_by_id(params[:article_id])
        when params[:tag_id] then Tag.find_by_id(params[:news_id])
      end    
    end
  
    def url_helper_params
      [parent_object, @photo].reject { |obj| obj.nil? } # we have to get rid of any the parent_object if it's nil, or else this will fail :(
    end
end

# index.rhtml

<%= link_to "New Photo", new_photo_path %> # same problem as our destroy redirect

We have routes like /users/james/photos, and /tags/montrealonrails/photos. We want to seamlessly maintain the top level of the path without resorting to conditionals or repetition. That is, if you browse to /users/james/photos, and click on the show link, you should go to /users/james/photos/1, not /photos/1. There should also be a polymorphic plural url helper. We have url_for for members (/photos/1), but for collections (/photos), we're stuck resorting to calling the url helpers themselves. So, to create a collection url, we'd have to check what the parent object was, and then call the appropriate helper based on that. And, all of this is further complicated when there are namespaces (/cms/products). Wouldn't it be great if there was a better way?

Stupid Simple Urls

Try saying that three times fast. Done? Good, because it's not called that - I was just messing with you.

URLigence

Intelligent url building.

## routes.rb

map.resources :photos
map.resources :users, :has_many => :photos
map.resources :tags, :has_many => :photos

map.namespace :admin do |admin|
  admin.resources :products, :has_many => :options
  admin.resources :options
end

##

assert_equal "/photos", smart_url(:photos)
assert_equal "/photos", smart_url(nil, nil, nil, :photos) # in case your parent objects aren't there
assert_equal "/users/james/photos", smart_url(User.find_by_name(:james), :photos)
assert_equal "/users/james/photos/1", smart_url(User.find_by_name(:james), Photo.find_by_id(1))
assert_equal "/photos/1", smart_url(nil, Photo.find_by_id(1)) # in the case that your parent object isn't there
assert_equal "/photos/1/edit", smart_url(:edit, Photo.find_by_id(1))

assert_equal "/admin/products", smart_url(:admin, :products)
assert_equal "/admin/products/1", smart_url(:admin, Product.find_by_id(1))
assert_equal "/admin/products/1/options", smart_url(:admin, Product.find_by_id(1), :options)
assert_equal "/admin/products/1/edit", smart_url(:edit, :admin, Product.find_by_id(1))
assert_equal "/admin/options", smart_url(:admin, nil, :options) # in the case that your parent object isn't there

It's pretty straightforward. Just call smart_url with any parameters that might be there, including ones that might be nil, and symbols at the beginning for namespaces (simple_url/cms/products), member actions (/products/1/edit), or both (/cms/products/1/edit), objects in the middle, and a symbol at the end for a resource's index method (/products). That's it.

Get It

Get version 0.1 at http://svn.jamesgolick.com/urligence/tags/stable. Oh, and don't take the name of the tag too seriously - I just wrote it tonight.

svn export http://svn.jamesgolick.com/urligence/tags/stable vendor/plugins/urligence

Let me know what you think of it.

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