URI Routing

[eluser]m40[/eluser]
I'd like to use URLs like www.example.com/item/123/ where 123 is the item ID.

I can think of 2 approaches:
1) having a controller named item and a function inside of it for each item; this, of course, is an awful approach;
2) using routing - something like $route['item/(: num)'] = "items/view/$1";;

I was wondering if a more elegant approach is available.

Thanks!