Make reverse route helpers return a non-primitive string with method attribute

[alexdavid]

Make reverse route helpers return a non-primitive string with method attribute

[charlierudolph]

Thinking about it more I think I would prefer just a simple hash (or Route object) with url and method attributes. Maybe have two helpers, one that returns a route and one that just returns the path.

res.locals.routes # functions return Route object
res.locals.paths  # functions return URLs as strings

//- form_helper.jade
mixin form(route)
  form(action=route.url, method=route.method)
    if block 
      block

//- link_helper.jade
mixin link(text, path)
  a(href=path.url)
    text

//- index.jade
+link(paths.users())
+form(routes.updateUser(123))

[catharinejm]

I agree with @charlierudolph. Good to keep the paths as paths, but an abstraction over them which encapsulates the full action (path + method) would be useful.

[alexdavid]

I like this, what do you guys want to do for restful routes then? I think both routes and paths should have the same name

[charlierudolph]

Please explain your last comment Alex. I'm unsure what you are referring to

[alexdavid]

Sorry, I'm talking about update, create, and destroy actions.

If we have separate routes object they can't be named the same as show and index because they have different methods.

Should paths contain a subset of the routes object since "user" and "update_user" would be the same path?

paths = { "user", "users", "new_user", "edit_user" }
routes = { "user", "users", "new_user", "edit_user", "update_user", "create_user", "destroy_user" }

[charlierudolph]

I would think paths and routes have the same keys but just different values. Thinking about routes added by something other then resources I don't think its makes sense to restrict what goes into paths

[kevgo]

I get the first path (separate paths and methods), but not the second part (paths vs routes). Can somebody please lay this out more simply, with examples? The solution that the conversation ended with here seems redundant, where routes are just a superset of paths.

[alexdavid]

This is the current proposal

paths.editUser(123)          # "/users/123/edit"
routes.editUser(123).url     # "/users/123/edit"
routes.editUser(123).method  # "GET"

[kevgo]

I don't like the duplication between paths.foo and routes.foo.url Can we go with just the routes version for now, and then introduce a shortcut syntax for paths later as needed? We could also override the toString method on the object returned by routes.foo, so that it returns the url. This allows it to be used directly for the path in templates (which call toString on objects).

<form action="<%= routes.editUser(123) %>"

[alexdavid]

This was the original idea for this PR. The difference between using a non-primitive string and setting the toString method on an object is non primitive strings also set valueOf, length, and all String prototype methods such as slice, etc...

[kevgo]

Non-primitive strings sounds like the way to go to me then. routes seems a better namespace for that, since this comes from the routes file.

[alexdavid]

Merged in c1338d83