route_matcher

RouteMatcher

Your Rails 3 route helper for pretty URLs sharing the same dynamic path "part"

For example, have both routes on the same path part

# in config/routes.rb
':brand'          => 'brands#show'       # /nike
':brand_category' => 'brands#category'   # /fashion

With rails 3 you can use constrains to seperate between them. But what if you those constrains are data driven? Then RouteMatcher may come in handy:

# in config/routes.rb
':brand' => 'brands#show', constraints => RouteMatcher::UrlMatcher.new('brands') { Brand.map{|b| "/#{b.slug}" } }

# in brand.rb
after_save { RouteMatcher::UrlMatcher.mark_dirty('brands') }

• Matcher lazy loads, it prevents database calls at the start of the app (and rake tasks for example)
• It caches the allowed URLs in memory to prevent database calls on each request
• Uses a timestamp in Rails.cache for cache invalidation

Known issues

• If you have a multi process production environment (which is pretty likely), it will only work with a shared Rails cache, like memcache (cause of the timestamps)