Issue with will_paginate page links

Question

I currently have a comment model that posts under a micropost and both are displayed on the same page. The issue is that both are displayed on the same page and both are paginated and I am trying to go for the facebook approach to microposting. Here is the issue below:

The links for both pagination turns into this href="/users/2?page=2" rather than href="/users/2/micropost?page=2" or href="/users/2/comment?page=2". I am unsure how to go about solving this problem. Here are some of my code. All suggestions are much appreciated!

Micropost Render HTML

<table class="microposts">
<% if microposts.any? %>
<%= render microposts %>
<%= will_paginate microposts, :page_links => false %>
<% else %>
<div class="EmptyContainer"><span class='Empty'>Add a thread!</span></div>
<% end %>
</table>

Comment Section HTML

<div id='CommentContainer-<%= micropost.id%>' class='CommentContainer Condensed2'>
<div class='Comment'>
<%= render :partial => "comments/form", :locals => { :micropost => micropost } %>
</div>
<div id='comments'>
  <% comments = micropost.comments.paginate(:per_page => 5, :page => params[:page]) %>
  <%= render comments %>
  <%= will_paginate comments, :class =>"pagination" %>
</div>
</div>

User Controller for the Show Page

  def show
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
    @comment = Comment.find(params[:id])
    @micropost = Micropost.new
    @comment = Comment.new
    @comment = @micropost.comments.build(params[:comment])
    @comments = @micropost.comments.paginate(:page => params[:page], :per_page => 5)
    @microposts = @user.microposts.order('created_at DESC').paginate(:per_page => 10, :page => params[:page])
      respond_to do |format|
      format.html
      format.js
     end
  end

Answer 1

Problem lies within will_paginate way of creating urls for each page (it doesn't have anything to do with jQuery).

By design, will_paginate try its best to guess what's the base url for the page user is on (internally it's using controller/action to do that). That base url is then combined with any extra params passed to will_paginate helper using :params and succesive page numbers.

For now (will_paginate 3.0.3), in order to overwrite this default behavior, you need to write your custom LinkRenderer class. Below there's example of such class - it makes use of new, extra option :base_link_url that can be passed to will_paginate view helper. Passed string is then used as a base when creating pagination links. If :base_link_url option is not passed, it will fallback to default behavior.

Put following class somewhere rails can find it on load (/lib for example, provided you've added /lib to your autoload paths in application.rb):

# custom_link_renderer.rb
class CustomLinkRenderer < WillPaginate::ActionView::LinkRenderer
  def prepare(collection, options, template)
    @base_link_url = options.delete :base_link_url
    @base_link_url_has_qs = @base_link_url.index('?') != nil if @base_link_url
    super
  end

  protected
  def url(page)
    if @base_link_url.blank?
      super
    else
      @base_url_params ||= begin
        merge_optional_params(default_url_params)
      end

      url_params = @base_url_params.dup
      add_current_page_param(url_params, page)

      query_s = []
      url_params.each_pair {|key,val| query_s.push("#{key}=#{val}")}

      if query_s.size > 0
        @base_link_url+(@base_link_url_has_qs ? '&' : '?')+query_s.join('&')
      else
        @base_link_url
      end
    end
  end
end

Usage:

# in your view
will_paginate collection, :renderer => CustomLinkRenderer, :base_link_url => '/anything/you/want'

---

And now back to your case. By this time you probably see the solution - you can have two will_paginate widgets on one page with different base urls by passing different :base_link_url options for those two.