Match id at base path rather than under controller name

Question

Say I have a User Model. And a route such as this:

http://www.mycoolapp.com/users/1

How can I match http://www.mycoolapp.com/1 where 1 matches the first User, without using /users/1.

Do you use a catch all? How is this accomplished in rails routing?

Answer 1

Your Routes file will need to look something like this, assuming you already have a User resource:

YourApp::Application.routes.draw do
  ....
  ....
  resources :user

  get ":id" => "users#show", :as => 'root_user'
end

The very last line - and it must be last, so it doesn't override other urls in your application - manually creates a path that should work. You can also reference it using 'root_user_path' in your code to create the links.