RAILS link_to external site, url is attribute of user table, like: @users.website

Question

I'm working on a website that allows users to create an account. One of the attributes when creating a user is a users personal website. When I try to use the users website like this:

<%= link_to @user.site, @user.url %>

The url that gets generated is: http://0.0.0.0:3000/www.userswebsite.com

I think this is because of the @user part of the link_to... but how can I get this to link to www.userwebsite.com ?

score 97 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 05 '14 at 14:30

97

You can prepend url with protocol if it's absent:

module UrlHelper
  def url_with_protocol(url)
    /^http/i.match(url) ? url : "http://#{url}"
  end
end

And then:

link_to @user.site, url_with_protocol(@user.url), :target => '_blank'

edited Sep 05 '14 at 14:30

rogerdpack

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answered Feb 16 '11 at 20:50

Voldy

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Use :target => '_blank' instead of :target => :blank. It doesn't work as expected, you can try it by opening the same link from the newly created window. – dostu Apr 02 '12 at 02:51
If my URL doesn't include `www.` then my app considers it an internal link. E.g. `http://example.com` links to the current page. – Dennis May 06 '14 at 15:34

score 28 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 16 '11 at 03:22

28

Looks like you need to stick the protocol on your link. E.g. you have www.userswebsite.com in your database, it should be http://www.userswebsite.com

answered Feb 16 '11 at 03:22

cam

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this works but relies on being able to always keep a sanitized url in the database, which may not always be possible...see the Voldy answer for one that sanitizes on its way out – rogerdpack Sep 05 '14 at 14:31

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 10 '15 at 09:03

3

You are storing URLs without the http:// so they are being interpreted as relative URLs. Try this: link_to @user.site, "http://#{@user.url}"

answered Feb 10 '15 at 09:03

Anshul Garg

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 14 '16 at 20:18

Try out the awesome gem Domainatrix:

Then you can simply parse the URL on the fly with:

<%= Domainatrix.parse(@user.url).url %>

Better yet, create a before_save action in your user model that parses the url before saving it.

before_save :parse_url

def parse_url
  if self.url
    self.url = Domainatrix.parse(self.url).url
  end
end

Here are some samples of what you can do with Domainatrix:

url = Domainatrix.parse("http://www.pauldix.net")
url.url       # => "http://www.pauldix.net" (the original url)
url.public_suffix       # => "net"
url.domain    # => "pauldix"
url.canonical # => "net.pauldix"

url = Domainatrix.parse("http://foo.bar.pauldix.co.uk/asdf.html?q=arg")
url.public_suffix       # => "co.uk"
url.domain    # => "pauldix"
url.subdomain # => "foo.bar"
url.path      # => "/asdf.html?q=arg"
url.canonical # => "uk.co.pauldix.bar.foo/asdf.html?q=arg"

RAILS link_to external site, url is attribute of user table, like: @users.website

4 Answers4

Linked