pboling-subdomain-fu

= SubdomainFu

SubdomainFu provides a modern implementation of subdomain handling in Rails. It takes aspects from account_location, request_routing, and other snippets found around the web and combines them to provide a single, simple solution for subdomain-based route and url management.

== Installation

SubdomainFu is available both as a traditional plugin and a GemPlugin. To install it as a traditional plugin (Rails 2.1 or later):

script/plugin install git://github.com/mbleigh/subdomain-fu.git

To use it as a GemPlugin, add it to your environment.rb:

config.gem 'mbleigh-subdomain-fu', :source => "http://gems.github.com", :lib => "subdomain-fu"

== Examples

SubdomainFu works inside of Rails's URL Writing mechanisms to provide an easy and seamless way to link and otherwise understand cross-subdomain routing. You can use the :subdomain option both in named and non-named routes as well as in generated resources routes.

Let's say my domain is 'intridea.com'. Here are some examples of the use of the :subdomain option:

url_for(:controller => "my_controller", :action => "my_action", :subdomain => "awesome") # => http://awesome.intridea.com/my_controller/my_action

Now let's say I'm at http://awesome.intridea.com/ and I want back to the root. Specifying "false" will remove any current subdomain:

users_url(:subdomain => false) # => http://intridea.com/users

Note that this plugin does not honor the :only_path notion of routing when doing so would go against the intent of the command. For example, if I were at http://intridea.com again:

users_path(:subdomain => "fun") # => http://fun.intridea.com/users users_path(:subdomain => false) # => /users

In this way you can rest assured that you will never misdirect your links to the same subdomain when you meant to change it.

== Use in controllers and views

You have access to current_subdomain and current_domain methods.

current_subdomain - returns all subdomains. http://awesome.website.stuff.example.com => "awesome.website.stuff"

current_domain - returns all subdomains except for the first subdomain and the domain with TLD. http://awesome.website.stuff.example.com => "website.stuff.example.com"

This might appear strange at first, but the original plugin in this space was account_location, which had this behavior for current domain. Subdomain-fu did not use the same style as account_location with current_subdomain, thus the overlap. However Subdomain-fu has created a lot of utility in its implementation of current_subdomain, so the overlap stays!

If what you really want is just the domain, then use request.domain. The purpose of current_domain is to only strip off the first subdomain, if any, and return what's left.

== Configuration

You may need to configure SubdomainFu based on your development setup. The configuration required is:

=== TLD Size

A hash for each environment of the size of the top-level domain name. (something.com = 1, localhost = 0, etc.)

SubdomainFu.tld_size = 1 # sets for current environment SubdomainFu.tld_sizes = {:development => 0, :test => 0, :production => 1} # set all at once (also the defaults)

=== Mirrors

Mirrors are the subdomains that are equivalent to no subdomain (i.e. they 'mirror') the usage of the root domain.

SubdomainFu.mirrors = %w(www site we) # Defaults to %w(www)

=== Preferred Mirror

SubdomainFu also understands the notion of a 'preferred mirror', that is, if you always want your links going to 'www.yourdomain.com' instead of 'yourdomain.com', you can set the preferred mirror like so:

SubdomainFu.preferred_mirror = "www"

Now when you create a link with subdomain => false in the options the subdomain will default to the preferred mirror.

== Routing

SubdomainFu can also work within Rails' routing for subdomain-specific routes. For instance, if you only wanted your administrative tools available in the "admin" subdomain you could add this to your routes.rb file:

map.with_options :conditions => {:subdomain => 'admin} do |admin|
  admin.resources :posts
  admin.resources :users
end

== Resources

• GitHub Repository: http://github.com/mbleigh/subdomain-fu
• RDocs: http://rdoc.info/projects/mbleigh/subdomain-fu

Copyright (c) 2008 Michael Bleigh (http://www.mbleigh.com/) and Intridea, Inc. (http://www.intridea.com/). Released under the MIT license