Route Descriptions

Route Descriptions

Route Descriptions are a format for describing a URL or path-location on which you would like a particular bit of code to run. They are used by the Application class's route method.

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Route Format

The route format allows many different types of description operations, they are as follows.

Literal Path Definition

The simplest of route-descriptions would be /, which would unify with either '$host/' or '$host/index.html'. Or, for example, the index.html in the home directory: home/index.html. In other words, these types of routes unify with urls that literally match the route.

Wildcard Definitions

Tannus routes allow the use of asterisk (*) wildcards for directory names, filenames, and file-extension-names. For example:

• * - matches literally any URL

• */ - matches any URL with one directory name and either no base-name or a base-name of "index.html"

• *.[extension] - matches any URL with no directory name, which has a base-name at all, and has an extension-name of [extension]. For example, the route *.html would match any top-level URL with an extension-name of .html.

• [basename].* - matches any URL with no directory name, which has an extension-name at all, and has a basename of [basename]. (e.g. index.* unifies with "index.html" or "index.md" or "index.json")

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Parametric Definitions

Tannus routes allow " parameters " to be requested in the route-description, which are then defined by the URL and passed to the Page. They are defined as follows:

• :filename - matches any URL with no directory-name. Will also define the parameter "filename" and make it available to the Page. For instance, said route would match "index.html", or "fewp-dewp.css". It doesn't care what the value is at all, it's simply there to collect it. Once "matched", one could access the filename parameter with this.parameters.get( "filename" ).

• :dir/index.html - matches any URL with any directory-name, and base-name of "index.html", while also defining 'dir' as a page-parameter.

Page-Parameters can, however, be referenced more than once, and this is where a bit of validation can take place. Observe:

• :name/:name - matches any URL in which the directory-name and base-name are the same.

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Regular-Expression Routes

With routes, you can even describe a URL with a plain ol' regular expression. Simply pop a regular expression, wrapped in parentheses, anywhere you'd put any other type of route-segment, and it validates the corresponding URL-segment against that regular-expression. For example: (index|home\.html) will match either "index.html" or "home.html"