actix-web/guide/src/qs_5.md

URL Dispatch

URL dispatch provides a simple way to map URLs to Handler code using a simple pattern matching language. Regex crate and it's RegexSet is beeing used for pattern matching. If one of the patterns matches the path information associated with a request, a particular handler object is invoked. A handler is a specific object that implements Handler trait, defined in your application, that receives the request and returns a response object. More informatin is available in handler section.

Resource configuration

Resource configuraiton is the act of adding a new resource to an application. A resource has a name, which acts as an identifier to be used for URL generation. The name also allows developers to add routes to existing resources. A resource also has a pattern, meant to match against the PATH portion of a URL, it does not match against QUERY portion (the portion following the scheme and port, e.g., /foo/bar in the URL http://localhost:8080/foo/bar?q=value).

The Application::resource methods add a single resource to application routing table. This method accepts path pattern and resource configuration funnction.

# extern crate actix_web;
# use actix_web::*;
# use actix_web::httpcodes::*;
# 
# fn index(req: HttpRequest) -> HttpResponse {
#   unimplemented!()
# }
# 
fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .resource("/prefix", |r| r.f(index))
        .resource("/user/{name}", 
             |r| r.method(Method::GET).f(|req| HTTPOk))
        .finish();
}

Configuraiton function has following type:

   FnOnce(&mut Resource<_>) -> ()

Configration function can set name and register specific routes. If resource does not contain any route or does not have any matching routes it returns NOT FOUND http resources.

Configuring a Route

Resource contains set of routes. Each route in turn has set of predicates and handler. New route could be crearted with Resource::route() method which returns reference to new Route instance. By default route does not contain any predicates, so matches all requests and default handler is HTTPNotFound.

Application routes incoming requests based on route criteria which is defined during resource registration and route registration. Resource matches all routes it contains in the order that the routes were registered via Resource::route(). Route can contain any number of predicates but only one handler.

# extern crate actix_web;
# use actix_web::*;
# use actix_web::httpcodes::*;

fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .resource("/path", |resource|
            resource.route()
              .p(pred::Get())
              .p(pred::Header("content-type", "text/plain"))
              .f(|req| HTTPOk)
        )
        .finish();
}

In this example index get called for GET request, if request contains Content-Type header and value of this header is text/plain and path equals to /test. Resource calls handle of the first matches route. If resource can not match any route "NOT FOUND" response get returned.

Resource::route() method returns Route object. Route can be configured with builder-like pattern. Following configuration methods are available:

• Route::p() method registers new predicate, any number of predicates could be registered for each route.

• Route::f() method registers handler function for this route. Only one handler could be registered. Usually handler registeration is the last config operation. Handler fanction could be function or closure and has type Fn(HttpRequest<S>) -> R + 'static

• Route::h() method registers handler object that implements Handler trait. This is similar to f() method, only one handler could be registered. Handler registeration is the last config operation.

• Route::a() method registers asynchandler function for this route. Only one handler could be registered. Handler registeration is the last config operation. Handler fanction could be function or closure and has type Fn(HttpRequest<S>) -> Future<Item = HttpResponse, Error = Error> + 'static

Route matching

The main purpose of route configuration is to match (or not match) the request's path against a URL path pattern. path represents the path portion of the URL that was requested.

The way that actix does this is very simple. When a request enters the system, for each resource configuration registration present in the system, actix checks the request's path against the pattern declared. Regex crate and it's RegexSet is beeing used for pattern matching. If resource could not be found, default resource get used as matched resource.

When a route configuration is declared, it may contain route predicate arguments. All route predicates associated with a route declaration must be true for the route configuration to be used for a given request during a check. If any predicate in the set of route predicate arguments provided to a route configuration returns false during a check, that route is skipped and route matching continues through the ordered set of routes.

If any route matches, the route matching process stops and the handler associated with route get invoked.

If no route matches after all route patterns are exhausted, NOT FOUND response get returned.

Resource pattern syntax

The syntax of the pattern matching language used by the actix in the pattern argument is straightforward.

The pattern used in route configuration may start with a slash character. If the pattern does not start with a slash character, an implicit slash will be prepended to it at matching time. For example, the following patterns are equivalent:

{foo}/bar/baz

and:

/{foo}/bar/baz

A variable part(replacement marker) is specified in the form {identifier}, where this means "accept any characters up to the next slash character and use this as the name in the HttpRequest.match_info object".

A replacement marker in a pattern matches the regular expression [^{}/]+.

A match_info is the Params object representing the dynamic parts extracted from a URL based on the routing pattern. It is available as request.match_info. For example, the following pattern defines one literal segment (foo) and two replacement markers (baz, and bar):

foo/{baz}/{bar}

The above pattern will match these URLs, generating the following match information:

foo/1/2        -> Params {'baz':'1', 'bar':'2'}
foo/abc/def    -> Params {'baz':'abc', 'bar':'def'}

It will not match the following patterns however:

foo/1/2/        -> No match (trailing slash)
bar/abc/def     -> First segment literal mismatch

The match for a segment replacement marker in a segment will be done only up to the first non-alphanumeric character in the segment in the pattern. So, for instance, if this route pattern was used:

foo/{name}.html

The literal path /foo/biz.html will match the above route pattern, and the match result will be Params{'name': 'biz'}. However, the literal path /foo/biz will not match, because it does not contain a literal .html at the end of the segment represented by {name}.html (it only contains biz, not biz.html).

To capture both segments, two replacement markers can be used:

foo/{name}.{ext}

The literal path /foo/biz.html will match the above route pattern, and the match result will be Params{'name': 'biz', 'ext': 'html'}. This occurs because there is a literal part of . (period) between the two replacement markers {name} and {ext}.

Replacement markers can optionally specify a regular expression which will be used to decide whether a path segment should match the marker. To specify that a replacement marker should match only a specific set of characters as defined by a regular expression, you must use a slightly extended form of replacement marker syntax. Within braces, the replacement marker name must be followed by a colon, then directly thereafter, the regular expression. The default regular expression associated with a replacement marker [^/]+ matches one or more characters which are not a slash. For example, under the hood, the replacement marker {foo} can more verbosely be spelled as {foo:[^/]+}. You can change this to be an arbitrary regular expression to match an arbitrary sequence of characters, such as {foo:\d+} to match only digits.

Segments must contain at least one character in order to match a segment replacement marker. For example, for the URL /abc/:

• /abc/{foo} will not match.
• /{foo}/ will match.

Note that path will be URL-unquoted and decoded into valid unicode string before matching pattern and values representing matched path segments will be URL-unquoted too. So for instance, the following pattern:

foo/{bar}

When matching the following URL:

http://example.com/foo/La%20Pe%C3%B1a

The matchdict will look like so (the value is URL-decoded):

Params{'bar': 'La Pe\xf1a'}

Literal strings in the path segment should represent the decoded value of the path provided to actix. You don't want to use a URL-encoded value in the pattern. For example, rather than this:

/Foo%20Bar/{baz}

You'll want to use something like this:

/Foo Bar/{baz}

It is possible to get "tail match". For this purpose custom regex has to be used.

foo/{bar}/{tail:.*}

The above pattern will match these URLs, generating the following match information:

foo/1/2/           -> Params{'bar':'1', 'tail': '2/'}
foo/abc/def/a/b/c  -> Params{'bar':u'abc', 'tail': 'def/a/b/c'}

Match information

All values representing matched path segments are available in HttpRequest::match_info. Specific value can be received with Params::get() method.

Any matched parameter can be deserialized into specific type if this type implements FromParam trait. For example most of standard integer types implements FromParam trait. i.e.:

# extern crate actix_web;
use actix_web::*;

fn index(req: HttpRequest) -> Result<String> {
    let v1: u8 = req.match_info().query("v1")?;
    let v2: u8 = req.match_info().query("v2")?;
    Ok(format!("Values {} {}", v1, v2))
}

fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .resource(r"/a/{v1}/{v2}/", |r| r.f(index))
        .finish();
}

For this example for path '/a/1/2/', values v1 and v2 will resolve to "1" and "2".

It is possible to create a PathBuf from a tail path parameter. The returned PathBuf is percent-decoded. If a segment is equal to "..", the previous segment (if any) is skipped.

For security purposes, if a segment meets any of the following conditions, an Err is returned indicating the condition met:

• Decoded segment starts with any of: . (except ..), *
• Decoded segment ends with any of: :, >, <
• Decoded segment contains any of: /
• On Windows, decoded segment contains any of: ''
• Percent-encoding results in invalid UTF8.

As a result of these conditions, a PathBuf parsed from request path parameter is safe to interpolate within, or use as a suffix of, a path without additional checks.

# extern crate actix_web;
use actix_web::*;
use std::path::PathBuf;

fn index(req: HttpRequest) -> Result<String> {
    let path: PathBuf = req.match_info().query("tail")?;
    Ok(format!("Path {:?}", path))
}

fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .resource(r"/a/{tail:.*}", |r| r.method(Method::GET).f(index))
        .finish();
}

List of FromParam implementation could be found in api docs

Generating resource URLs

Use the HttpRequest.url_for() method to generate URLs based on resource patterns. For example, if you've configured a resource with the name "foo" and the pattern "{a}/{b}/{c}", you might do this.

# extern crate actix_web;
# use actix_web::*;
# use actix_web::httpcodes::*;
# 
fn index(req: HttpRequest) -> HttpResponse {
    let url = req.url_for("foo", &["1", "2", "3"]); // <- generate url for "foo" resource
    HTTPOk.into()
}

fn main() {
    let app = Application::new()
        .resource("/test/{a}/{b}/{c}", |r| {
             r.name("foo");  // <- set resource name, then it could be used in `url_for`
             r.method(Method::GET).f(|_| httpcodes::HTTPOk);
        })
        .finish();
}

This would return something like the string http://example.com/test/1/2/3 (at least if the current protocol and hostname implied http://example.com). url_for() method return Url object so you can modify this url (add query parameters, anchor, etc). url_for() could be called only for named resources otherwise error get returned.

External resources

Resources that are valid URLs, could be registered as external resources. They are useful for URL generation purposes only and are never considered for matching at request time.

# extern crate actix_web;
use actix_web::*;

fn index(mut req: HttpRequest) -> Result<HttpResponse> {
    let url = req.url_for("youtube", &["oHg5SJYRHA0"])?;
    assert_eq!(url.as_str(), "https://youtube.com/watch/oHg5SJYRHA0");
    Ok(httpcodes::HTTPOk.into())
}

fn main() {
    let app = Application::new()
        .resource("/index.html", |r| r.f(index))
        .external_resource("youtube", "https://youtube.com/watch/{video_id}")
        .finish();
}

Path normalization and redirecting to slash-appended routes

By normalizing it means:

• Add a trailing slash to the path.
• Double slashes are replaced by one.

The handler returns as soon as it finds a path that resolves correctly. The order if all enable is 1) merge, 3) both merge and append and 3) append. If the path resolves with at least one of those conditions, it will redirect to the new path.

If append is true append slash when needed. If a resource is defined with trailing slash and the request comes without it, it will append it automatically.

If merge is true, merge multiple consecutive slashes in the path into one.

This handler designed to be use as a handler for application's default resource.

# extern crate actix_web;
# #[macro_use] extern crate serde_derive;
# use actix_web::*;
#
# fn index(req: HttpRequest) -> httpcodes::StaticResponse {
#    httpcodes::HTTPOk
# }
fn main() {
    let app = Application::new()
        .resource("/resource/", |r| r.f(index))
        .default_resource(|r| r.h(NormalizePath::default()))
        .finish();
}

In this example /resource, //resource/// will be redirected to /resource/ url.

In this example path normalization handler get registered for all method, but you should not rely on this mechanism to redirect POST requests. The redirect of the slash-appending Not Found will turn a POST request into a GET, losing any POST data in the original request.

It is possible to register path normalization only for GET requests only

# extern crate actix_web;
# #[macro_use] extern crate serde_derive;
# use actix_web::*;
#
# fn index(req: HttpRequest) -> httpcodes::StaticResponse {
#    httpcodes::HTTPOk
# }
fn main() {
    let app = Application::new()
        .resource("/resource/", |r| r.f(index))
        .default_resource(|r| r.method(Method::GET).h(NormalizePath::default()))
        .finish();
}

Using a Application Prefix to Compose Applications

The Applicaiton::prefix()" method allows to set specific application prefix. If route_prefix is supplied to the include method, it must be a string. This prefix represents a resource prefix that will be prepended to all resource patterns added by the resource configuration. This can be used to help mount a set of routes at a different location than the included callable's author intended while still maintaining the same resource names.

For example:

# extern crate actix_web;
# use actix_web::*;
# 
fn show_users(req: HttpRequest) -> HttpResponse {
   unimplemented!()
}

fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .prefix("/users")
        .resource("/show", |r| r.f(show_users))
        .finish();
}

In the above example, the show_users route will have an effective route pattern of /users/show instead of /show because the application's prefix argument will be prepended to the pattern. The route will then only match if the URL path is /users/show, and when the HttpRequest.url_for() function is called with the route name show_users, it will generate a URL with that same path.

Custom route predicates

You can think of predicate as simple function that accept request object reference and returns true or false. Formally predicate is any object that implements Predicate trait. Actix provides several predicates, you can check functions section of api docs.

Here is simple predicates that check that request contains specific header:

# extern crate actix_web;
# extern crate http;
# use actix_web::*;
# use actix_web::httpcodes::*;
use http::header::CONTENT_TYPE;
use actix_web::pred::Predicate;

struct ContentTypeHeader;

impl<S: 'static> Predicate<S> for ContentTypeHeader {

    fn check(&self, req: &mut HttpRequest<S>) -> bool {
       req.headers().contains_key(CONTENT_TYPE)
    }
}

fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .resource("/index.html", |r|
           r.route()
              .p(ContentTypeHeader)
              .h(HTTPOk));
}

In this example index handler will be called only if request contains CONTENT-TYPE header.

Predicates can have access to application's state via HttpRequest::state() method. Also predicates can store extra information in requests`s extensions.

Modifing predicate values

You can invert the meaning of any predicate value by wrapping it in a Not predicate. For example if you want to return "METHOD NOT ALLOWED" response for all methods except "GET":

# extern crate actix_web;
# extern crate http;
# use actix_web::*;
# use actix_web::httpcodes::*;
use actix_web::pred;

fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .resource("/index.html", |r|
           r.route()
              .p(pred::Not(pred::Get()))
              .f(|req| HTTPMethodNotAllowed))
        .finish();
}

Any predicate accept list of predicates and matches if any of the supplied predicates match. i.e:

    pred::Any(pred::Get()).or(pred::Post())

All predicate accept list of predicates and matches if all of the supplied predicates match. i.e:

    pred::All(pred::Get()).and(pred::Header("content-type", "plain/text"))

Changing the default Not Found response

If path pattern can not be found in routing table or resource can not find matching route, default resource is used. Default response is NOT FOUND response. It is possible to override NOT FOUND response with Application::default_resource() method. This method accepts configuration function same as normal resource configuration with Application::resource() method.

# extern crate actix_web;
# extern crate http;
use actix_web::*;
use actix_web::httpcodes::*;

fn main() {
    Application::new()
        .default_resource(|r| {
              r.method(Method::GET).f(|req| HTTPNotFound);
              r.route().p(pred::Not(pred::Get())).f(|req| HTTPMethodNotAllowed);
         })
#        .finish();
}