On 12 October 2001, Ray Drew said:
> running quixote 0.41 on win nt4, apache 1.3, mod_python
>
> I'm new to web programming, so apologies if this is a stupid question.

It's not stupid at all.  What to do about trailing slashes in URLs is
one of the trickier subtleties to web programming.  One thing to ponder:
there is no such thing as a trailing slash; there are only URLs with an
empty final component.

> Some effort is made so that both /qdemo/ and /qdemo work as a URL.

Correct -- both in Quixote itself and in the  directive
recommended by doc/web-server.txt.

Speaking of which, what does everyone think of changing that directive
from
  
to
  

Is that any clearer or cleaner?  (I'm pretty sure it's equivalent, but
if I'm wrong please tell me!)

> /qdemo/simple works /qdemo/simple/ doesn't (is it because there are no
> further options after simple?)

Do you have SECURE_ERRORS = 0 in demo.conf?  If so, you should get a
somewhat useful error message when you access /qdemo/simple/.  Here's
what it tells me:

  The requested link "/q/simple/" was not found:
   has no _q_exports list

The Pythonic answer: 'simple()' is a function, not a namespace.  Asking
Quixote for "/q/simple" is like asking Python for 'quixote.demo.simple';
Quixote then decides that you really wanted to call that function.
Asking Quixote for "/q/simple/" is quite different: it's like asking
Python for 'quixote.demo.simple._q_index' (Quixote dictates that a URL
with an empty final component means you really want the index object,
'_q_index'; again it takes the initiative to call this object for you.)

To put it in traditional URL-space-as-filesystem terms: "/q/simple" is a
file, not a directory (folder).  By asking for "/q/simple/", you're
asking for the index file in directory "/q/simple" -- again, the empty
final component means you implicitly want the index object.  /q/simple
is a "file", not a "directory", so it doesn't have an index.

> /qdemo/12/ works but /qdemo/12 doesn't. (there are further options after 12,
> so to be consistent, shouldn't /qdemo/12 work like /qdemo does?)

That's odd -- it works for me, either with CGI or FastCGI.  In
particular, /q/12 issues a redirect to /q/12/.  Your assumption that
/q/12 should work just like /q is correct, and in fact it does work that
way.  Or it least it's supposed to.

How does it work when you run the demo as a CGI script?  Again, this
might be a mod_python thing, or a mod_python-under-NT thing.

        Greg
--
Greg Ward - software developer                gward@mems-exchange.org
MEMS Exchange                            http://www.mems-exchange.org