Path Delegating Handler

This handler is deprecated in favor of the PathHandler.

As you may have read in Handling Requests, Handy-Httpd offers a pre-made PathDelegatingHandler that can match HTTP methods and URLs to specific handlers; a common use case for web servers.

A PathDelegatingHandler is an implementation of HttpRequestHandler that will delegate incoming requests to other handlers based on the request's HTTP method and URL. Handlers are registered with the PathDelegatingHandler via one of the overloaded addMapping methods.

For example, suppose we have a handler named userHandler that we want to invoke on GET requests to URLs like /users/{userId:int}.

auto userHandler = getUserHandler();
auto pathHandler = new PathDelegatingHandler();
pathHandler.addMapping(Method.GET, "/users/{userId:int}", userHandler);
new HttpServer(pathHandler).start();

Path Patterns

In our example, we used the pattern /users/{userId:int}. This is using the PathDelegatingHandler's path pattern specification, which closely resembles so-called "Ant-style" path matchers.

A path pattern is a string that describes a pattern for matching URLs, using the concept of segments, where a segment is a section of the URL path. If our URL is /a/b/c, its segments are a, b, and c.

The following rules define the path pattern syntax:

• Literal URLs are matched exactly.
• /* matches any single segment in the URL.
• /** matches zero or more segments in the URL.
• ? matches any single character in the URL.
• {varName[:type]} matches a path variable (optionally of a certain type).

The easiest way to understand how these rules apply are with some examples:

Pattern                  Matches                Doesn't Match
-------------------------------------------------------------
/users                   /users                 /users/data

/users/*                 /users/data            /users
                         /users/settings        /users/data/yes

/users/**                /users                 /user
                         /users/data
                         /users/data/settings

/data?                   /datax                 /data
                         /datay                 /dataxyz
                         /dataz

/users/{userId}          /users/123             /users
                         /users/1a2b            /users/123/data

/users/{userId:int}      /users/123             /users/a
                         /users/42              /users/35.2
                         /users/-35

/users/{id:uint}         /users/123             /users/-2
                         /users/42

/users/{name:string}     /users/andrew          /users
                         /users/123

Parameter Types

The following parameter types are built-in to the handler's path pattern parser:

Name	Description	Regex
int	A signed integer number.	-?[0-9]+
uint	An unsigned integer number.	[0-9]+
string	A series of characters, excluding whitespaces.	\w+
uuid	A UUID (opens new window) string.	Too long

If you'd like a different pattern, you can use a literal regex instead.

Note that by specifying a type for a path parameter, you guarantee that you can safely call ctx.request.getPathParamAs!uint("id") from your handler, and rest assured that it has a value.