Handler 301

Handler 301 is a plugin for Ruby on Rails that lets you easily manage 301 redirections in on place in order to redirect them to current named routes.

All necessary informations are available on the wiki : wiki.github.com/kwi/handler301

Configuration example :

In the config/handler301.yml of your rails app :

"old_url.html": home_path
"old_url_without_path.html": home
"product_number_one.html": products_path :id => 1

Then, configure a controller that match non matching routes in your config/routes.rb

Rails2

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw  do |map|
  map.connect "*path", :controller => 'error', :action => 'handle404'
end

Rails3

MkdBaseApp::Application.routes.draw do
  match "*path" => 'error#handle404'
end

And finally, in your ErrorController (or whatever the name of your non matching routes controller) :

class ErrorController < ApplicationController
  def handle404
    unless handle_301(request.path, request.query_parameters)

      # Do your stuff here

    end
  end
end

TODO

Change for using Rails metal in order to speed up the mechanism