# Newbie question on url friendliness

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-url-friendliness/95554>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 5, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-url-friendliness/95554 "2006-06-05T23:58:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e19b73/32.png) [@kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kousen)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-url-friendliness/95554/1 "2006-06-05T23:58:10Z")

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If I wanted to use a friendly url, say, [http://www.something.com/my-url](http://www.something.com/my-url),  
how would I go about doing that? I can’t define an action my-url, and I  
don’t want to clutter my routes up…

Is there a way to do this?

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**Author:** ![kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e19b73/32.png) [@kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kousen)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 12:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-url-friendliness/95554/2 "2006-06-06T00:22:51Z")

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On 6/5/06, Ken K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> If I wanted to use a friendly url, say, [http://www.something.com/my-url](http://www.something.com/my-url),  
> how would I go about doing that? I can’t define an action my-url, and I  
> don’t want to clutter my routes up…
> 
> Is there a way to do this?

Yes, by routes. Not sure what you mean by clutter…  
Joe

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**Author:** ![kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e19b73/32.png) [@kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kousen)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 1:42am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-url-friendliness/95554/3 "2006-06-06T01:42:04Z")

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Joe Van D. wrote:

> On 6/5/06, Ken K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> 
> > If I wanted to use a friendly url, say, [http://www.something.com/my-url](http://www.something.com/my-url),  
> > how would I go about doing that? I can’t define an action my-url, and I  
> > don’t want to clutter my routes up…
> > 
> > Is there a way to do this?
> 
> Yes, by routes. Not sure what you mean by clutter…  
> Joe

If I have a lot of urls that I would like to do a - instead of a  
underscore, wouldn’t that take a lot of lines?

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**Author:** ![kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e19b73/32.png) [@kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kousen)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 2:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-url-friendliness/95554/4 "2006-06-06T02:05:09Z")

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Not sure what you mean, can you please clarify?

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**Author:** ![kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e19b73/32.png) [@kousen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kousen)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-url-friendliness/95554/5 "2006-06-06T01:27:38Z")

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I use this:  
map.connect ‘:id’, :controller =\> “pages”, :action =\> ‘view’

Which allows URLs to be simple like [http://www.mysite.com/123](http://www.mysite.com/123)…

…where 123 is the ID sent to the view action of the pages controller.