Thank you for the clarification, I understand it better now. I was indeed confused by the statement you quoted, I had thought that web2py's base behavior would that if it couldn't find a controller corresponding to somefunction, it would then invoke the default controller and search for somefunction on it which then successfully executes. Of course if the default controller doesn't have somefunction then web2py's final action would be to return an error.
Alex On Thursday, May 17, 2012 5:57:54 PM UTC-4, Anthony wrote: > > The web2py book and documentation has led me to believe that the following >> would work; >> >> http://120.0.0.1/myapp/default/somefunction can be written as >> http://120.0.0.1/myapp/somefunction but I get invalid request error >> > > Here's what the book says: > > web2py maps a URL of the form: > > 1. > > http://127.0.0.1:8000/a/c/f.html > > to the function f() in controller "c.py" in application "a". If f is not > present, web2py defaults to the indexcontroller function. If c is not > present, web2py defaults to the "default.py" controller, and if a is not > present, web2py defaults to the init application. If there is no init > application, > web2py tries to run the welcomeapplication. > > I think I see the confusion. It says if the controller is not present, > web2py defaults to the default.py controller. However, when you have the > URL /myapp/somefunction, technically the controller is present, as web2py > will interpret the second element of the URL as the controller (just > because you know somefunction is a function doesn't mean the default router > does) -- in that case, it's actually the function that is missing, not the > controller. So, what the above really means is: > > /myapp maps to /myapp/default/index > /myapp/default maps to /myapp/default/index > > but /myapp/somefunction does not map to /myapp/default/somefunction > because somefunction is interpreted as a controller in that URL (instead, > it maps to /myapp/somefunction/index, and you get an error because such a > controller doesn't exist). > > >> If I then overwrite routes.py using routes.example.py, the above case no >> longer works. Looking at both routes.example.py and router.example.py, >> it looks like both of them configure web2py's routing behavior in the same >> way, but the actual behavior is not the same. >> > > I assume you're referring to the default_controller='default' parameter > set in the routes.example.py example. I agree that's a little confusing > because you might expect it to work much like setting the default > controller in the parameter-based system, but again, let's look at what the > book says: > > When using the pattern-based system, the name of the default application, > controller, and function can be changed from *init*, *default*, and *index > * respectively to another name by setting the appropriate value in > routes.py > > > That's saying that setting the value of default_controller merely changes > the default value used by the standard routing system when that item is > missing from the URL. So, let's say you set > default_controller='mycontroller'. In that case, /myapp would map to > /myapp/mycontroller/index instead of /myapp/default/index, but > /myapp/somefunction would still cause a problem because somefunction would > be seen as a controller. > > One thing to note is that the parameter-based system was created quite a > while after the pattern-based system, so seemingly similar functionality > wasn't necessarily designed to behave the same way (hopefully the behavior > of the parameter-based system is seen as an improvement in this case). > > Anyway, I agree some of this could be better explained in the book. > > Anthony > >
