By default, Rails applications build URLs based on the primary key -- the id column from the database. Imagine we have a Person model and associated controller. We have a person record for Bob Martin that has id number 6. The URL for his show page would be:
/people/6
But, for aesthetic or SEO purposes, we want Bob's name in the URL. The last segment, the 6 here, is called the "slug". Let's look at a few ways to implement better slugs.
Domain model is an effective tool for software development. It can be used to express really complex business logic, and to verify and validate the understanding of the domain among stakeholders. Building rich domain models in Rails is hard. Primarily, because of Active Record, which doesn't play well with the domain model approach.
One way to deal with this problem is to use an ORM implementing the data mapper pattern. Unfortunately, there is no production ready ORM doing that for Ruby. DataMapper 2 is going to be the first one.
Another way is to use Active Record just as a persistence mechanism and build a rich domain model on top of it. That's what I'm going to talk about in this article.
| #!/bin/sh | |
| # Called by "git push" after it has checked the remote status, | |
| # but before anything has been pushed. | |
| # | |
| # If this script exits with a non-zero status nothing will be pushed. | |
| # | |
| # Steps to install, from the root directory of your repo... | |
| # 1. Copy the file into your repo at `.git/hooks/pre-push` | |
| # 2. Set executable permissions, run `chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-push` |
Each of these commands will run an ad hoc http static server in your current (or specified) directory, available at http://localhost:8000. Use this power wisely.
$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000
| # Expectations | |
| must_have_button | |
| wont_have_button | |
| must_have_checked_field | |
| wont_have_checked_field | |
| must_have_content | |
| wont_have_content |
Command Line
pry -r ./config/app_init_file.rb - load your app into a pry session (look at the file loaded by config.ru)pry -r ./config/environment.rb - load your rails into a pry sessionDebugger
| #=Navigating= | |
| visit('/projects') | |
| visit(post_comments_path(post)) | |
| #=Clicking links and buttons= | |
| click_link('id-of-link') | |
| click_link('Link Text') | |
| click_button('Save') | |
| click('Link Text') # Click either a link or a button | |
| click_on('Button Value') |
External SEO is concerned primarily with how your website is being linked or referred to.
Your backlink profile plays a huge role in helping the search engine to understand the quality and trustworthiness of your site.
If a link is from a high quality website, it's likely to be seen as a vote of trust, likewise if the link or the linking website is of a low quality it can have a negative effect. So, with that in mind it's important to make sure where possible that your links are of as high quality as possible.
Links from external websites always play an important role in determining how valuable one website is in comparison to another. Where possible, it's recommended that any external links are altered to reference the new destination URLs. This will save a search engine having to go through a redirect before reaching their final destination, and can therefore mitigate negative effects of additional load speed, algorithmic damping, etc.
| #=Navigating= | |
| visit('/projects') | |
| visit(post_comments_path(post)) | |
| #=Clicking links and buttons= | |
| click_link('id-of-link') | |
| click_link('Link Text') | |
| click_button('Save') | |
| click('Link Text') # Click either a link or a button | |
| click_on('Button Value') |
The final result: require() any module on npm in your browser console with browserify
This article is written to explain how the above gif works in the chrome (and other) browser consoles. A quick disclaimer: this whole thing is a huge hack, it shouldn't be used for anything seriously, and there are probably much better ways of accomplishing the same.
Update: There are much better ways of accomplishing the same, and the script has been updated to use a much simpler method pulling directly from browserify-cdn. See this thread for details: mathisonian/requirify#5
