Why do routes with a dot in a parameter fail to match?

Question

I've got an route for my users like /iGEL/contributions, which works fine. But now a user registered with a name like 'A.and.B.', and now the route fails to match, since the name contains dots.

My route:

get "/:user/contributions" => 'users#contributions'

Any ideas?

score 149 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 24 '13 at 14:48

149

See the blue info box here:

By default dynamic segments don’t accept dots – this is because the dot is used as a separator for formatted routes. If you need to use a dot within a dynamic segment add a constraint which overrides this – for example :id => /[^\/]+/ allows anything except a slash.

That would for example be:

get "/:user/contributions" => 'users#contributions', :constraints => { :user => /[^\/]+/ }

edited Aug 24 '13 at 14:48

Leopd

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answered Mar 20 '11 at 16:16

Zabba

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Thanks. The regexp you quoted has a typo thought, it should be /[^\/]+/, not /[^\/]/+. But thats an error in the original guide. – iGEL Mar 20 '11 at 17:14
The syntax would be, for example: get "/:user/contributions" => 'users#contributions', :constraints => {:id => /[^\/]+/} – DavidJ Apr 11 '12 at 16:53
`/.*/` also works, I don't know regex well enough to tell the difference. – Kris Oct 05 '18 at 15:47
got more details @RyanGlen ? it does work on the indicated ruby on rails versio. – Zabba Jun 26 '19 at 19:47
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In Rails 6 I [had to set](https://stackoverflow.com/a/57895695/27358) `format: false, defaults: {format: 'html'}` to get Rails to stop trying to treat the dot segment as a file extension indicating a content type. – David Moles Sep 11 '19 at 19:39

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 21 '15 at 19:43

9

If your variable segment is the last one, then using the [^\/] regex will also eat the format. In such a case rather use:

/([^\/]+?)(?=\.json|\.html|$|\/)/

answered Sep 21 '15 at 19:43

Christopher Oezbek

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score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '11 at 16:18

7

Looks like the following link answers your question.

http://avdi.org/devblog/2010/06/18/rails-3-resource-routes-with-dots-or-how-to-make-a-ruby-developer-go-a-little-bit-insane/

answered Mar 20 '11 at 16:18

huntsfromshadow

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Why do routes with a dot in a parameter fail to match?

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