# Slugy
[](https://travis-ci.com/appprova/slugy)
A Phoenix library to generate slug for your schema fields
Let's suppose we have a `Post` schema and we want to generate a slug from `title` field and save it to the `slug` field. To achieve that we need to call `slugify/2` following the changeset pipeline passing the desireable field. `slugify/2` generates the slug and put it to the changeset.
```elixir
defmodule Post do
import Slugy, only: [slugify: 2]
schema "posts" do
field :title, :string
field :body, :text
field :slug, :string
end
def changeset(post, attrs) do
post
|> cast(attrs, [:title, :body])
|> slugify(:title)
end
end
```
Running this code on iex console you can see the slug generated as a new change to be persisted.
iex> changeset = Post.changeset(%Post{}, %{title: "A new Post"})
%Ecto.Changeset{changes: %{title: "A new Post", slug: "a-new-post"}}
`slugify/2` just generates a slug if the field's value passed to `slugify/2` comes with a new value to persist in `attrs` (in update cases) or if the struct is a new record to save.
### Usage
The `slugify/2` expects a changeset as a first parameter and an atom on the second one. The function will check if there is a change on the `title` field and if affirmative generates the slug and assigns to the `slug` field, otherwise do nothing and just returns the changeset.
iex> slugify(changeset, :title)
%Ecto.Changeset{changes: %{slug: "content-1"}}
### Slugify from an embedded struct field
In rare cases you need to generate slugs from a field inside a embeded structure that represents a jsonb column on your database.
For example by having a struct like below and we want a slug from `data -> title`:
```elixir
%Content{
type: "text",
data: %{title: "Content 1", external_id: 1}
}
```
Just pass a list with the keys following the path down to the desirable field.
iex> slugify(changeset, [:data, :title])
%Ecto.Changeset{changes: %{slug: "content-1"}}
### Custom slug
If you want a custom slug composed for more than one fields **e.g.** a post `title` and the `type` like so `"how-to-use-slugy-video"` you need to implement the `Slug protocol` that extracts the desirable fields to generate the slug.
```elixir
defmodule Post do
# ...
end
defimpl Slugy.Slug, for: Post do
def to_slug(%{title: title, type: type}) do
"#{title} #{type}"
end
end
```
So, `%Post{title: "A new Post", body: "Post body", type: "video"}` with the above `Slug` protocol implementation will have a slug like so `a-new-post-video`
### Without a changeset
In cases we just want to get the slug string without a changeset involved we can use
`slugify/1` to achieve that.
iex> slugify("Slugy is awesome")
"slugy-is-awesome"
## Routes
And lastly for having our routes with the slug we just need to implement the `Phoenix.Param` protocol to our slugified schemas. `Phoenix.Param` will extract the slug in place of the `:id`.
```elixir
defmodule Post do
@derive {Phoenix.Param, key: :slug}
schema "posts" do
# ...
end
def changeset(post, attrs) do
# ...
end
end
```
For more information about `Phoenix.Param` protocol see in [https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Param.html](https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Param.html)
## Add slug field as a unique index
To make sure slug is always unique we can add a unique constraint to our
slug column
```elixir
defmodule MyApp.Migrations.AddSlugToPosts do
use Ecto.Migration
def change do
alter table(:posts) do
add :slug, :string
end
create unique_index(:posts, [:slug])
end
end
```
And add the `unique_constraint/2` to check in our changeset pipeline.
```elixir
defmodule Post do
def changeset(post, attrs) do
# ...
|> unique_constraint(:slug)
end
end
```
## Installation
Add to your `mix.exs` file.
```elixir
def deps do
[
{:slugy, "~> 1.2.1"}
]
end
```
Don’t forget to update your dependencies.
```
$ mix deps.get
```
# Documentation
You can also find the docs here [https://hexdocs.pm/slugy](https://hexdocs.pm/slugy).
# Contribute
Feel free to contribute to this project. If you have any suggestions or bug reports just open an issue or a PR.
