Changing the id parameter in Rails routing

Question

Using Ruby on Rails 3's new routing system, is it possible to change the default :id parameter

resources :users, :key => :username 

come out with the following routes

/users/new /users/:username /users/:username/edit ...etc 

I'm asking because although the above example is simple, it would be really helpful to do in a current project I'm working on.

Is it possible to change this parameter, and if not, is there a particular reason as to why not?

Answer 1

In your route you can use

resources :user, param: :username 

Answer 2

If I understand you correctly, what you want is to have the username 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.