Spring MVC PathVariable for products and categories implementation

[Vasil Ivanov]

Hello Guys ! I develop eCommerce platform but i don't know how to implement the scenario below. I want to have friendly URLs (for SEO stuff..). I have the correct slug in the database for categories and products for example:

www.domain.com/category-tools/

wwww.domain.com/category-laptops/ - which are categories

but i and products which are:

www.domain.com/iphone6s-32gb

www.domain.com/macbook-pro-ssd

How to implement this logic in to the handler below ? How to know when it is product or category ? Do i need to make two separate queries (one for products and one for categories) to the database ?

@RequestMapping(value = "/{categoryOrProduct}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String getCategory(Model model) {

        model.addAttribute("category", .......);

        if( is category ) {
         return "categoryTemplate"
        }

        return "productTemplate;
    }

[Stephan van Hulst]

Slugs should only be an after-thought. Don't use them to identify a resource. First design your URLs so they unambiguously locate a resource:

https://example.com/shop/categories/laptops

https://example.com/shop/products/macbook-pro-ssd

If you still need the slug, for instance when you're using integers for ids rather than unique names, you add them to the URL *after* the URL contains enough information to identify the resource:

https://example.com/shop/categories/5/laptops

https://example.com/shop/products/24/macbook-pro-ssd

@Controller
@RequestMapping(name = "products", path = "products", produces = "application/json; charset=UTF-8")
public final class ProductController {

  private final ProductRepository repository;

  @Autowired
  public ProductController(ProductRepository repository) {
    if (repository == null)
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("The repository must not be null.");

    this.repository = repository;
  }

  @RequestMapping(name = "products.index", method = "GET")
  public Map<Integer, ProductSummary> index() {
    return repository.getAll().map(ProductSummary::new).collect(toMap(ProductSummary::id));
  }

  @RequestMapping(name = "products.get", path = "{id}/**", method = "GET")
  public ProductData getProduct(@PathVariable("id") int id) {
    return repository.find(id).map(ProductData::new).orElseThrow(NotFoundException::new);
  }
}

In the above code, the index() action will map the {id} part of the URL to the id method parameter, and ignore everything that comes afterwards.