- The Two Purposes of Routing
- Bound Parameters
- Wildcard Components ("Receptors")
- Static Strings
- The routes.rb File
- The Ante-Default Route and respond_to
- The Empty Route
- Writing Custom Routes
- Using Static Strings
- Using Your Own "Receptors"
- A Note on Route Order
- Using Regular Expressions in Routes
- Default Parameters and the url_for Method
- Using Literal URLs
- Route Globbing
- Globbing Key-Value Pairs
- Named Routes
- What to Name Your Routes
- The Special Scope Method with_options
- Conclusion
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Route Globbing
In some situations, you might want to grab one or more components of a route without having to match them one by one to specific positional parameters. For example, your URLs might reflect a directory structure. If someone connects to
/files/list/base/books/fiction/dickens
you want the files/list action to have access to all four remaining fields. But sometimes there might be only three fields:
/files/list/base/books/fiction
or five:
/files/list/base/books/fiction/dickens/little_dorrit
So you need a route that will match (in this particular case) everything after the second URI component.
You can do that with a route glob. You "glob" the route with an asterisk:
map.connect 'files/list/*specs'
Now, the files/list action will have access to an array of URI fields, accessible via params[:specs]:
def list specs = params[:specs] # e.g, ["base", "books", "fiction", "dickens"] end
The glob has to come at the end of the pattern string in the route. You cannot do this:
map.connect 'files/list/*specs/dickens' # Won't work!
The glob sponges up all the remaining URI components, and its semantics therefore require that it be the last thing in the pattern string.