Sitemap builder for Rails app

As you know sitemap is one of important elements of the website. Here's the easy way to generate sitemap.xml using Rails based app/website:

# Gemfile
gem 'big_sitemap'

# lib/tasks/sitemap.rake
require 'big_sitemap'

namespace :custom do
  desc "Generate sitemap"
  task :sitemap => :environment do
    include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers

    sitemap_options = {
      document_root: Rails.root.join('public'),
      url_options: { host: 'example.com' },
      ping_google: true,
      ping_bing: true,
      gzip: true
    }

    if Rails.env.development?
      sitemap_options = {
        document_root: Rails.root.join('public'),
        url_options: { host: 'localhost', port: 3000 },
        ping_google: false,
        ping_bing: false,
        gzip: false
      }
    end

    BigSitemap.generate(sitemap_options) do
      add root_path, change_frequency: 'daily', priority: 1.0

      Stuff.all.each do |stuff|
        add stuff_path(stuff), change_frequency: 'daily', priority: 0.5
      end
    end
  end
end

Then we can generate using command:

rake custom:sitemap

Capistrano integration is quite useful to generate sitemap and ping search engines automatically during deployment.

# config/deploy.rb
namespace :deploy do
  desc "Generate sitemap"
  task :sitemap do
    run "cd '#{current_path}' && #{rake} custom:sitemap RAILS_ENV=#{rails_env}"
  end
end

after 'deploy:update', 'deploy:sitemap'