AvramSlugify

AvramSlugify generates slugs for database columns. These slugs can be used for creating nice looking URLs and permalinks.

Installation

1. Add the dependency to your shard.yml:

   dependencies:
     avram_slugify:
       github: luckyframework/avram_slugify
       version: ~> 0.1
   

2. Run shards install

3. Require the shard after requiring Avram

If using Lucky, require the shard in your src/shards.cr file after requiring Avram:

# In src/shards.cr
# Put this after `require "avram"`
require "avram_slugify"

If not using Lucky, require the shard after Avram:

# In whichever file you require your shards
# Put this after `require "avram"`
require "avram_slugify"

Usage

Let's say you have an Article model with 2 String columns, slug and title. You can use AvramSlugify.set to set the slug column to a slugified version of the title.

class SaveArticle < Article::SaveOperation
  before_save do
    AvramSlugify.set slug,
      using: title,
      query: ArticleQuery.new
  end
end

1. The first argument is the attribute you want to store the generated slug on. In this case slug, but it could be any String attribute.
2. The second argument is called a slug candidate. In this case title is the slug candidate.
3. The third argument is the query to use when checking for slug uniqueness.

So if the value of the slug candidate title is "Avram is a great ORM", the slug value will be set to avram-is-a-great-orm.

Finding records

You can find record with Avram's built-in query methods.

ArticleQuery.new.slug("avram-is-a-great-orm").first

Or if you want to add a shortcut you can do something like this:

class ArticleQuery < Article::BaseQuery
   def find(slug_or_id : String | Int64) : Article
     if slug_or_id.is_a?(Int64)
       previous_def(slug_or_id)
    else
       slug(slug_or_id).first
    end
   end
end

# Find by slug
ArticleQuery.find("avram-is-a-great-orm") 
# Find by id
ArticleQuery.find(1_i64) 
# Can be scoped like any other query
ArticleQuery.new.account_id(account.id).find("avram-is-a-great-orm")

What if the generated slug is not unique?

If the slug is not unique, a UUID will be appended to the first slug candidate (the attribute passed to using).

So if an Article has a slug with hello-world and then you try to save a new Article with a title set to "Hello World", the slug will not be unique. To make the slug unique AvramSlugify will append a UUID to the slug. For example: hello-world-3fa569f5-6678-4f77-a281-fb1b9d850407

Using multiple slug candidates

To make it less likely that AvramSlugify will have to append a UUID, you can provide multiple slug candidates in using.

For example, you could do using: [title, author_email]. If the generated slug from title is already taken, AvramSlugify will try to generate a slug from author_email. If that doesn't work it will append a UUID to title

Scoping uniqueness check

Let's say an Article belongs to an Account and you want slugs to be unique per account. Here's how you'd do that:

class SaveArticle < Article::SaveOperation
  # This means you will need to pass in an account when saving/updating
  # https://luckyframework.org/guides/database/validating-saving#passing-extra-data-to-operations
  needs account : Account

  before_save do
    AvramSlugify.set slug.
      using: title,
      # Use the Account to query against Articles in the same Account
      query: ArticleQuery.new.account_id(@account.id)
  end
end

Combining multiple attributes for a slug

Let's say you have a User with a invite_code that you'd like to be generated from the first_name and last_name.

You can give an array of attributes and they will be combined when generating the slug:

AvramSlugify.set invite_code,
  using: [[first_name, last_name]],
  query: UserQuery.new

So if first_name is "Jane" and last_name is "Adler", the generated slug for invite_code will be "jane-adler".

You must put the array in another array. If you did just [first_name, last_name] AvramSlugify would use first_name by default and last_name if the first_name is not unique

You can also use multiple slug candidates for fallbacks by adding more slug candidates to the array passed to using:

[
  nickname,
  [first_name, last_name],
  [first_name, last_name, location]
]

Using strings as slug candidates

Occassionally you may want to use a string as a slug candidate:

using: ["first-#{first_name.value}"]

What if the slug candidate is blank?

Avram::Attributes can be nil or empty strings so if the slug candidate's value is nil or an empty string the slug value will be unchanged.

What if the slug is already set?

AvramSlugify will not overwrite an existing slug.

If you want to reset a slug, first set the slug value to nil, then run AvramSlugify.set:

slug.value = nil
AvramSlugify.set slug,
  using: title,
  query: ArticleQuery.new

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://github.com/luckyframework/avram_slugify/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

• Paul Smith - creator and maintainer