Handle categories and (nested) resources

[Linus Pettersson]

I have an application, built with Rails 3.1.3, that has products and categories. The categories are related to other categories, so a category can be a parent or a child category. The products are then related to a child category.

Now, I'm thinking about how I should define the routes. Is it a good idea to somehow nest the categories and products resources? Ideally, I would like URLs like this:

    

    example.com/parent/child/product-1234

    

    like this:

    example.com/clothes/underwear/some-socks-1234

    or maybe like this to keep it restful?

    example.com/p/clothes/c/underwear/....

But maybe that's a bit messy to achieve with the routes? I would have to nest the category with itself I guess?

Any ideas on how to achieve something like this?

Do I create the category routes like this:

    resources :categories, :as => "parent" do

        resources :categories, :as => "child"

    end

or similar?

It's not that important to have the product nested inside the categories. Maybe it will just make it hard to manage...

[Linus Pettersson]

Maybe it is better to just create two models/controllers and nest them? That way I get restful routes easily.