Syntax for the route file

Each line of the file represents a rule and is composed in 5 parts:

• The HTTP method(s)
• The character :
• The requested URI
• The characters ->
• The target URI

HTTP Methods

The method can be:

• One of get, post, put, delete
• A combination of more that one of them separated by commas, for example: get,post
• The keyword all, equivalent to get,post,put,delete

Requested URI

The requested URI can be any URI, expressed in RegEx. Two placeholders can be used for readability:

• :segment represents a URI segment (a part between two /)
• :any represents one or more segments

Parentheses can be used to capture parts of the URI.

Target URI

The target URI must correspond to a Controller. It must have the syntax controller/method/params. If params is missing, no parameters will be sent to the method. If method is missing, index will be used.

Placeholders such as $1, $2, etc. can be used to display the captured parentheses in the RegEx.

Comments

Comments can be added in the file. They start with a # and can either be on their own line or at the end of a line.

Blank lines can also appear in the file.

Valid examples

Here is an example of a valid routes file. Note that the whitespaces is optional and only present to improve readability.

# Homepage
get:            /                   ->  /article # this could have been /article/index
 
# Article pages
get:            /(:segment)         ->  /article/show/$1
get,post:       /(:segment)/edit    ->  /article/edit/$1
delete:         /(:segment)         ->  /article/delete/$1
 
# Images
get:            /uploads/(:any)     ->  /files/show/$1
 
# Shortcut
any:            /about-me           ->  /user/show/1