On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Clement Hallet <clement@challet.eu> wrote:
> Hello Gabriel,
>
> Why not making a key using only the first letter ?
>
>  function(doc) {
>   if (doc.type && doc.name) {
>     emit([doc.type, doc.name[0]);
>   }
>  }
>
>
> and querying it with that key = ["artist","a"]

Interesting idea. If I only use the first letter (and lowercase it as
well to catch names starting with "A"), then I can get the URLs I
want. I thought I would lose the sorting within each letter, but
they're still sorted! I don't understand why that is, but it's a nice
surprise.

My view now looks like this:

  function(doc) {
    if (doc.type && doc.name) {
      var firstLetter = doc.name.toLowerCase()[0];
      emit([doc.type, firstLetter], doc.name);
    }
  }

And the rewrite is simplified to this:

  {
    "from": "artists/:key",
    "to": "_list/artists/type_name",
    "query": {
      "key": ["artist", ":key"]
    }
  },

Thanks!

> --
> Clément
>
> Le 21 juin 2011 à 16:18, Gabriel Farrell a écrit :
>
>> I'm putting together a site where I have artists and works of art. I
>> would like to browse those artists and works alphabetically, with URLs
>> like http://example.com/artists/a and http://example.com/works/b. I
>> have a view called type_name:
>>
>>  function(doc) {
>>    if (doc.type && doc.name) {
>>      emit([doc.type, doc.name]);
>>    }
>>  }
>>
>> My "artists" list renders the results from that view in a template. I
>> can get the first page of artists with a rewrite like this:
>>
>>  {
>>    "from": "artists/a",
>>    "to": "_list/artists/type_name",
>>    "query": {
>>      "startkey": ["artist", "a"],
>>      "endkey": ["artist", "aZZZZZ"]
>>    }
>>  },
>>
>> How would I generalize this for all letters of the alphabet? I want to
>> do something like the following, but the last ":startkey" isn't
>> substituted:
>>
>>  {
>>    "from": "artists/:startkey",
>>    "to": "_list/artists/type_name",
>>    "query": {
>>      "startkey": ["artist", ":startkey"],
>>      "endkey": ["artist", ":startkeyZZZZZ"]
>>    }
>>  },
>>
>> I can achieve something close by extending the URL to
>> http://example.com/artists/a/aZZZZZ and using the following rewrite:
>>
>>  {
>>    "from": "artists/:startkey/:endkey",
>>    "to": "_list/artists/type_name",
>>    "query": {
>>      "startkey": ["artist", ":startkey"],
>>      "endkey": ["artist", ":endkey"]
>>    }
>>  },
>>
>> The URL is uglier but it works. Is there any way to make the shorter
>> URL work? Frankly, I think some of my trouble is that, coming from
>> other web frameworks, I'm not used to my URLs being constrained in
>> this way. I want to be able to grab the request path, munge it all
>> over with JavaScript, then send it on to my lists, shows, views, etc.
>
>