Change the name of the :id parameter in Routing resources for Rails

Question

Rails 4 & 5

In Rails 4, the :param option was added, which seems to do exactly what you're looking for. You can take a look at the Rails 3 code compared to the Rails 4 code.

Details

You can easily implement this in your routes.rb file:

# config/routes.rb

resources :posts, param: :slug

# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb

# ...
@post = Post.find_by(slug: params[:slug])
# ...

As of the release of Rails 4, this functionality is documented in the Rails Guides.

Rails 3

Unfortunately, in Rails 3, the :key option for resources was removed, so you can no longer easily change the name for routes created in this way by just passing in an extra option.

Details

I assume you've already somehow gotten the application working the way you want in the past year, but I will go into a way to get the effect you describe in Rails 3 in routes.rb. It will just involve a bit more work than the to_param method. You can still define custom parameters in routes defined using scope and match (or it's cousins get, put, post, and delete). You simply write in the parameter name you want in the matcher:

get 'clients/:client_name', :to => 'clients#show', :as => client

scope 'clients/:client_name' do
  get 'sites/:name', :to => 'sites#show', :as => site
end

You would have to manually add all the routes that resources automatically creates for you, but it would achieve what you're looking for. You could also effectively use the :controller option with scope and additional scope blocks to take out some of the repetition.

---

EDIT (May 8, 2014): Make it more obvious the answer contains information for both Rails 3 & 4. Update the links to the code to go to exact line numbers and commits so that they should work for a longer period of time.

EDIT (Nov 16, 2014): Rails 4 should be at the top now and include relevant information as it's been the current version of Rails for quite some time now.

EDIT (Aug 9, 2016): Reflect that the solution still works in Rails 5, and update outdated links.

in Rails 4, pass param option to change the :id params. For example resources :photos, param: :photo_name will generate /photos/:photo_name

In Rails 3 you can rename the id keys by using a combination of namespaces and scopes like this (not very nice though):

namespace :clients do
  scope "/:client_name" do
    namespace :sites do
      scope "/:name" do
         post "/:title" => "articles#create"
         ...
      end
    end
  end
end

If I understand you correctly, what you want is to have the client_name instead of id in your url, right?

You can do that by overriding the to_param method in your model. You can get more information here.