Using a name as a param instead of an id

[shakin]

I'm sure I've seen this question posted here before, but I could not find it.

What I want to do is use a name in my url instead of an id, then use the .find method to get the correct record.

Eg.

URL = http://www.foobar.com/person/show/Bob

In PersonController for the action 'show' I want to end up with SQL that looks like "SELECT * FROM people WHERE name = 'Bob'", but I want to just use the .find method to keep my code more readable. Right now I am trying this:

@person = person.findall, :conditions => params["name"])

I don't get an error, but @person is not defined in the view, so it's obviously not getting the record.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

[waferbaby]

What you want to do is use something like:

@person = Person.find_by_name(@params[:name])

[Luke Redpath]

You will also need to make sure you have a route configured so that "bob" is recognised as a name in the url /person/show/bob:

map.connect 'person/show/:name', :controller => 'person', :action => 'show'

[shakin]

Many thanks to both of you. I do remember reading about it now.

Maybe this summer I will have time to start a community-driven Rails documentation web site. I'd love to have a resource that's as good as the PHP manual. Then again, by this summer maybe somebody else will have beaten me to the punch.