I wanted to know how the Racket web server figures out whether a URL refers
to a servlet or not. In particular, I was curious about how the
"servlet-root" path in the configuration table was used (its default is
"."). The closest thing I could find to documentation was this bullet point
in the docs for "web-server@":
Execute servlets in the mapping URLs to the given servlet root directory
under htdocs.
I've read this sentence many times and I still can't parse it... Is there a
word or two missing or something?
Anyway, after digging through the source code (particularly
web-server-unit.rkt), here's my understanding: If
[host-root]/[file-root]/[servlet-root]/[url-path] refers to an existing file
whose extension is ".ss", ".scm", ".rkt", or ".rktd", then the file is
loaded and served as a servlet. (It's actually a bit more complicated,
since it handles extra path elements after the servlet name.) For example,
if host-root is ".", file-root is "htdocs", servlet-root is "servlets", and
url-path is "foo.rkt", then if "./htdocs/servlets/foo.rkt" exists, it is
served as a servlet, otherwise if "./htdocs/foo.rkt" exists, it is served as
a file.
Is this right? Can this be documented more clearly somewhere? (Or is it
already?)
Anyway, is there a way to customize this (e.g. to be able to map directory
URLs to servlets) without having to recreate the entire chain of dispatchers
from web-server@ by hand?
--Doug
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