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A Lesson from WordPress

As much as WordPress is a code disaster, there are still a few good practices and lessons that can be learned from it.  One of those practices that I've come to appreciate is the idea of a "slug", which is basically a URL, DOM ID and database key-friendly field in a table.

So for example, if you have a Products table with a product number, name and description, you may find that none of these fields are appropriate to use as a DOM ID but you may need a DOM ID to do some page automation.  This is a good time for a "slug"!

id   slug      product_number   name               description
--   -------   --------------   ------------       -----------
1    widgetT   PN-409A 1        Widget Thing       A thingy widget.
2    widgetS   PN-409B 5        Widget Stuff       Stuff for a widget.
3    thingyN   TH-655Z ABC      Non-widget Thing   Thing with no widget.

Now we have a unique, DOM-friendly ID that we can use in our HTML:

<a href="#" id="{{ $product->slug }}" onClick="addProduct({{ $product->slug }}">

 <script>
    function addProduct(slug) {
        $('#' + slug).css('color', '#ccc');
    }
</script>

I find this to be a lot cleaner and intutive than:

<a href="#" id="product{{ $product->id }}" onClick="addProduct({{ $product->id }}">

 <script>
    function addProduct(pid) {
        $('#product' + id).css('color', '#ccc');
    }
</script>

If you ever look at the page source, it is handy to have the ID indicate the actual product.

Plus, you can use that slug for more SEO-friendly URLs:

<a href="/product/{{ $product->slug }}">

Result:  http://www.mysite.com/product/widgetT

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