Rails route to username instead of id

Question

I am trying to change the rails routes from /users/1 to /username. I currently set this up so it works for the actions of showing and editing. The actual issue is that when I go to update the user by using:

<%= form_for @user do |f|%> 

It never updates, because the update action is routed to /users/:id. Is there any way to route this so that it works for /username? (which is the route that is rendering in my forms as the action). I've been scratching my head over this one for a while now.

EDIT:

The issue isn't routing to username, that it working correctly. The issue is that the form routes to /username for update, however the update route for users is still /users/:id instead of :/id.

I tried updating my routes to this, but to no avail:

match '/:id', :to => "users#show", :as => :user match '/:id', :to => "users#update", :as => :user, :via => :put match '/:id', :to => "users#destroy", :as => :user, :via => :delete 

EDIT:

Doh! This fixed the issue:

match '/:id', :to => "users#show", :as => :user, :via => :get 

Answer 1

In your user model:

def to_param   username end 

The to_param method on ActiveRecord objects uses, by default, just the ID of the object. By putting this code in your model, you're overwriting the ActiveRecord default, so when you link to a User, it will use the username for the parameter instead of id.