Richard Hollis richhollis

Friendly URLs

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.

Sessions and Conversations

HTTP is a stateless protocol. Sessions allow us to chain multiple requests together into a conversation between client and server.

Sessions should be an option of last resort. If there's no where else that the data can possibly go to achieve the desired functionality, only then should it be stored in the session. Sessions can be vulnerable to security threats from third parties, malicious users, and can cause scaling problems.

That doesn't mean we can't use sessions, but we should only use them where necessary.

	require 'uri'
	require 'net/http'

	class Chunked
	def initialize(data, chunk_size)
	@size = chunk_size
	if data.respond_to? :read
	@file = data
	end
	end

	# coffee_script_tag
	# Usage:
	#
	# <%= coffee_script_tag do %>
	# alert 'Hello World'
	# <% end %>
	#
	#
	# You will get in your page:
	#

	#################################################################
	# #
	# A guide to setting up a linode Ubuntu VPS for #
	# Ruby on Rails hosting with nginx & passenger #
	# #
	# Compiled by Chris Toomey [ctoomey.com] on Sept. 9 2011 #
	# #
	#################################################################

	# Start with base 10.04 image. Setup the DNS for any domains you

	# before this file is loaded, a locale should be set:
	#
	# In a browser environment, you can use:
	# ```<script>__locale='en';</script>```
	#
	# In a server environment (specifically node.js):
	# ```global.__locale = 'en';```

	# normalize in-app locale string to "en" or "de-AT"
	parts = @__locale.split('-')

	#!/usr/bin/env ruby

	# List all keys stored in memcache.
	# Credit to Graham King at http://www.darkcoding.net/software/memcached-list-all-keys/ for the original article on how to get the data from memcache in the first place.

	require 'net/telnet'

	headings = %w(id expires bytes cache_key)
	rows = []

	module MyApp
	class Application < Rails::Application
	if Rails.env == 'test'
	require 'diagnostic'
	config.middleware.use(MyApp::DiagnosticMiddleware)
	end
	end
	end

	sudo cp nginx /etc/init.d/
	sudo update-rc.d nginx defaults
	sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
	/etc/init.d/nginx start

	function convertMS(ms) {
	var d, h, m, s;
	s = Math.floor(ms / 1000);
	m = Math.floor(s / 60);
	s = s % 60;
	h = Math.floor(m / 60);
	m = m % 60;
	d = Math.floor(h / 24);
	h = h % 24;
	return { d: d, h: h, m: m, s: s };

Richard Hollis richhollis

Friendly URLs

Sessions and Conversations

Adding, Accessing, and Removing Data