URL Rewriting: Name instead of ID

[eluser]perfectsam[/eluser]
Oh well, I finally came to my senses and didn't implement it like I initially wanted. I took mddd's solution instead (thanks!) and my links look like this now:

Code:

base_url/author/123/john_doe

I just had to change all author links to

Code:

'author/'.$author->author_id.'/'.make_url($author->getName())

and used this route in routes.php:

Code:

$route['author/(:num)/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\_]+'] = "authors/show/$1";

which works perfectly. Thanks everyone again.