[web-devel] Type-safe URL handling

[Chris Eidhof]

On 16 mrt 2010, at 17:51, Gregory Collins wrote:

> Michael Snoyman <michael at snoyman.com> writes:
> 
>> I think the only piece of the puzzle missing to combine these two
>> together is to have mkResources output something along the lines of:
>> 
>> data RoutePiece = StaticPiece String | IntPiece | StringPiece
>> _validRoutes :: [[RoutePiece]]
>> _validRoutes =
>>  [ [StaticPiece "user"]
>>  , [StaticPiece "user", StaticPiece "find", IntPiece]
>>  , [StaticPiece "user", StaticPiece "name", StringPiece]
>>  ]
> 
> Yes, this approach smells a lot better to me: the types are types and
> the data are data. Just a brainstorm: if each handler monad were to
> carry its routing table around with it, you could define something like:
> 
>    match :: ByteString
>          -> (WhateverYourWebMonadIsCalled a)
>          -> (WhateverYourWebMonadIsCalled a)
> 
> And write
> 
>    handler = match "/foo/:bar/#int/" $ do ...
> 
> without the template haskell quasiquotation (i.e. do the checking at
> runtime.) Is it always true that compile-time link checking is
> possible/desirable? All of these solutions also imply that each handler
> knows where it's hung on the routing table so that it can resolve
> relative URLs, etc.
> 
> IMO no matter what a link-checker should be lightweight enough that you
> can refactor easily without rewriting a bunch of static tables; you
> should be able to move an entire "subtree" to another place in the
> routing table in O(1) time.
> 
> This rabbit hole goes pretty deep though; if you're serious about the
> bondage and discipline approach you'd want to ensure that you can check
> query parameters; i.e. "'/foo' takes a mandatory 'bar' integer parameter
> on the queryString and an optional 'sort' parameter which must be either
> 'asc' or 'desc'", etc. At some point I have to wonder: is the medicine
> worse than the disease?

This would be a fairly straightforward extension of my library. I'll see if I can come up with something on the trainride to ZuriHac tomorrow!

-chris