# Use slug for page routes, id for store.find

**URL:** <https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/use-slug-for-page-routes-id-for-store-find/6443>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [October 7, 2014, 10:41pm UTC](https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/use-slug-for-page-routes-id-for-store-find/6443 "2014-10-07T22:41:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 12

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**Author:** ![ballPtPenguin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/discuss.emberjs.com/ballptpenguin/32/15535_2.png) [@ballPtPenguin](https://discuss.emberjs.com/u/ballPtPenguin)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 5:54am UTC](https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/use-slug-for-page-routes-id-for-store-find/6443/12 "2014-10-16T05:54:29Z")

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I’ve put a lot of thought into this concept and tried a number of different things. For me, I’m using the ‘name’ attribute instead of a slug, but I believe the same rules apply.

I think I finally have a pattern that I can live with, but there were a few “gotchas”, such as:

- Replacing `this.store.find('thing', params.thing_id)` with `this.store.find('thing', { name: params.thing_name })` has at least three consequences:
  1. it will always query the server,
  2. it will expect an array (e.g. {“things”: […]}) from the server,
  3. it will return a DS.PromiseArray

Things I tried but decided _ **against:** _

- Setting the primaryKey to ‘name’ on my adapters, even though my server uses ids (this messed up my belongsTo relationships among other things.)
- Coercing my server-side code to accept `api/thing/kitty` instead of `api/thing?name=kitty`. I decided that I should tinker as little as possible with my server side and look for the **Ember** solution.
- Using _transitionTo_ to cheat my router and turn thing/6 into thing/kitty. (Need to be able to load the app fresh _at_ thing/kitty)
- Building elaborate beforeModel hooks to pre-fetch models from the store (ie server) and fish the ids out of them so my model hooks can use the ol’ `this.store.find('thing', 6)`

After learning more about Ember’s Promises, specifically DS.PromiseArray, I settled into just doing this a bunch:

[https://github.com/ballPointPenguin/cupery/blob/master/ember/app/routes/description.js](https://github.com/ballPointPenguin/cupery/blob/master/ember/app/routes/description.js)

which seems good, but it still hits the server every time.

check out [https://github.com/ballPointPenguin/cupery/tree/master/ember/app](https://github.com/ballPointPenguin/cupery/tree/master/ember/app), which is very much a work-in-progress and changing very quickly, but might be helpful.

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