Recursively redirecting in Rails 3 Routes

Question

We are updating our large web app and getting rid of our URL synonym system. For example, though we only use one model for 'advertiser', it is aliased to 'merchants' and 'sellers', using synonymous paths. Thus, /merchant/1 and /seller/1 use the same exact controller and action as advertiser/1.

We no longer need this functionality, but we do need for old URLs to correctly redirect users to the proper place (i.e. proper controller actions).

So far, I've tried:

1) reading http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html - This lead me to try the following suggestions

2) match '/merchants' => redirect('/advertisers') - this didn't seem to work at all, though the syntax seems correct.

3) iterating over resources (this produces a TON of routes and may cause insecurities):

ADVERTISER_SYNONOYMS = ['affiliates', 'sellers']

ADVERTISER_SYNONYMS.each do |a|
  resources :advertisers, :path => a,  :as => :advertiser
    resources :other_controller do
      member do
        get :test
        match :generate_test
      end
    end
  end
end

We use nested resources in our routes.rb, so I'm struggling with getting these synonymns to be recognized all throughout more complex URLs. If anyone dealt with this problem or has a more elegant suggestion, I'd be most grateful.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 21 '13 at 02:04

There are many ways to handle this, including additional routes in routes.rb like you've tried, or rewrites at the webserver level such as Apache or Nginx.

One solution I like is the rack-rewrite gem; it keeps routes clean and the rules are plain ruby. It provides a set of methods for configuring rewrites and redirects. For your situation, I would want to use permanent redirects. Though I haven't tested it out myself, something like the following may work for you:

# Gemfile
gem 'rack-rewrite'

# application.rb
config.middleware.use(Rack::Rewrite) do
  r301 %r{/merchant|seller/(\w+)}, '/advertiser/$1'
end

Recursively redirecting in Rails 3 Routes

1 Answers1