Rails gem "friendly_id": How to get a live preview of the slug, before its object is created

friendly-id, live-preview, ruby-on-rails, rubygems, slug

Solution

FriendyId author here.

FriendlyId internally uses the private `set_slug` to do this. This method is invoked via a `before_validation` callback. If for some reason you do not wish to call `valid?`, you can invoke the `set_slug` method via `send`, or define a method in your model which invokes it:

instance = ModelClass.new
instance.send(:set_slug)

# or
class ModelClass < ActiveRecord::Base
  friendly_id :name, use: :slugged

  def generate_slug_preview
    set_slug
  end
end 

However, note that bypassing or ignoring validations is often a bad idea. For example, if your model included a validation on the `name` field, and then you used that field as the basis of the slug, then you are previewing a slug that will never actually be generated.

Problem

Original source