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authorChris McDonough <chrism@plope.com>2010-12-19 04:31:15 -0500
committerChris McDonough <chrism@plope.com>2010-12-19 04:31:15 -0500
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+.. index::
+ single: resource location
+
+.. _resourcelocation_chapter:
+
+Resource Location and View Lookup
+---------------------------------
+
+As a primary job, :app:`Pyramid` provides a mechanism to find and invoke code
+written by the application developer based on parameters present in the
+:term:`request`.
+
+:app:`Pyramid` uses two separate but cooperating subsystems to find and
+invoke code written by the application developer: :term:`resource location`
+and :term:`view lookup`.
+
+- A :app:`Pyramid` :term:`resource location` subsystem is given a
+ :term:`request`; it is responsible for finding a :term:`resource` object
+ based on information present in the request. When a resource is found via
+ resource location, it becomes known as the :term:`context`.
+
+- Using the context provided by :term:`resource location`, the :app:`Pyramid`
+ :term:`view lookup` subsystem is provided with a :term:`request` and
+ :term:`context`. It is then responsible for finding and invoking a
+ :term:`view callable`. A view callable is a specific bit of code written
+ and registered by the application developer which receives the
+ :term:`request` and which returns a :term:`response`.
+
+These two subsystems are used by :app:`Pyramid` serially: first, a
+:term:`resource location` subsystem does its job. Then the result of context
+finding is passed to the :term:`view lookup` subsystem. The view lookup
+system finds a :term:`view callable` written by an application developer, and
+invokes it. A view callable returns a :term:`response`. The response is
+returned to the requesting user.
+
+.. sidebar:: What Good is A Resource Location Subsystem?
+
+ The :term:`URL dispatch` mode of :app:`Pyramid` as well as many other web
+ frameworks such as :term:`Pylons` or :term:`Django` actually collapse the
+ two steps of resource location and view lookup into a single step. In
+ these systems, a URL can map *directly* to a view callable. This makes
+ them simpler to understand than systems which use distinct subsystems to
+ locate a resource and find a view. However, explicitly finding a resource
+ provides extra flexibility. For example, it makes it possible to protect
+ your application with declarative context-sensitive instance-level
+ :term:`authorization`, which is not well-supported in frameworks that do
+ not provide a notion of a resource.
+
+There are two separate :term:`resource location` subsystems in
+:app:`Pyramid`: :term:`traversal` and :term:`URL dispatch`. They can be used
+separately or they can be combined. Three chapters which follow describe
+:term:`resource location`: :ref:`traversal_chapter`,
+:ref:`urldispatch_chapter` and :ref:`hybrid_chapter`.
+
+There is only one :term:`view lookup` subsystem present in :app:`Pyramid`.
+Where appropriate, we will describe how view lookup interacts with context
+finding. One chapter which follows describes :term:`view lookup`:
+:ref:`views_chapter`.
+
+Should I Use Traversal or URL Dispatch for Resource Location?
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Since :app:`Pyramid` provides support for both approaches, you can use either
+exclusively or combine them as you see fit.
+
+:term:`URL dispatch` is very straightforward. When you limit your
+application to using URL dispatch, you know every URL that your application
+might generate or respond to, all the URL matching elements are listed in a
+single place, and you needn't think about :term:`resource location` or
+:term:`view lookup` at all.
+
+URL dispatch can easily handle URLs such as
+``http://example.com/members/Chris``, where it's assumed that each item
+"below" ``members`` in the URL represents a single member in some system.
+You just match everything "below" ``members`` to a particular :term:`view
+callable`, e.g. ``/members/{memberid}``.
+
+However, URL dispatch is not very convenient if you'd like your URLs to
+represent an arbitrary hierarchy. For example, if you need to infer the
+difference between sets of URLs such as these, where the ``document`` in the
+first URL represents a PDF document, and ``/stuff/page`` in the second
+represents an OpenOffice document in a "stuff" folder.
+
+.. code-block:: text
+
+ http://example.com/members/Chris/document
+ http://example.com/members/Chris/stuff/page
+
+It takes more pattern matching assertions to be able to make hierarchies work
+in URL-dispatch based systems, and some assertions just aren't possible.
+Essentially, URL-dispatch based systems just don't deal very well with URLs
+that represent arbitrary-depth hierarchies.
+
+But :term:`traversal` *does* work well for URLs that represent
+arbitrary-depth hierarchies. Since the path segments that compose a URL are
+addressed separately, it becomes very easy to form URLs that represent
+arbitrary depth hierarchies in a system that uses traversal. When you're
+willing to treat your application resources as a tree that can be traversed,
+it also becomes easy to provide "instance-level security": you just attach a
+security declaration to each resource in the tree. This is not nearly as
+easy to do when using URL dispatch.
+
+In essence, the choice to use traversal vs. URL dispatch is largely
+religious. Traversal dispatch probably just doesn't make any sense when you
+possess completely "square" data stored in a relational database because it
+requires the construction and maintenance of a tree and requires that the
+developer think about mapping URLs to code in terms of traversing that tree.
+However, when you have a hierarchical data store, using traversal can provide
+significant advantages over using URL-based dispatch.