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I was creating a Google Sitemaps implementation for a customer when it occurred to me sitemaps probably can be put in a nice plugin as long as we follow some conventions. Luckily REST gave us those conventions and so here is the sitemap_generator plugin:

 script/generate sitemap jobs daily

will generate a jobs/sitemap.xml for you:

xml.instruct!
xml.urlset "xmlns" => "http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84" do
  xml.url do
    xml.loc         "http://#{@host}/jobs"
    xml.lastmod     w3c_date(@jobs.first.updated_at)
    xml.changefreq  "daily"
  end
  @jobs.each do |job|
    xml.url do
      xml.loc         "http://#{@host}/jobs/#{job.id}"
      xml.lastmod     w3c_date(job.updated_at)
      xml.changefreq  "daily"
    end
  end
end

That builder template results in something like this:

wget http://localhost:3000/jobs/sitemap.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
  <url>
    <loc>http://localhost:3000/jobs</loc>
    <lastmod>2006-11-07T11:31:57+00:00</lastmod>
    <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://localhost:3000/jobs/1</loc>
    <lastmod>2006-11-07T11:31:57+00:00</lastmod>
    <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
  </url>
</urlset>

In more general form:

script/generate sitemap <restful_controller_name> <frequency>

Valid frequencies are specified by Google. Be sure to look through the specs. Apart from the above, it also generates a Google SitemapIndex file for you in /sitemap.xml (i.e the file that lists all your sitemaps).

It works because if you’re using REST the plugin can make some assumptions about how your app is structured. I think in 90% of the cases this sitemap_generator is all you’re going to need.

For the rest you’re on your own but you can use the generator as a nice startup since it gives you all the necessary ingredients.

Incidentally, my customer’s wishes we’re a bit more exotic than this plugin could deliver so I didn’t end up using this plugin. But it would be a shame to toss it out the window really so here it is:

svn co svn://www.buildless.com/svn/repos/sitemap_generator

in your vendor/plugins directory and follow the instructions. Feedback is more than welcome.