Routes 1.2 Released

I got Routes 1.2 out the door today, it's a fairly important update for 2 reasons:

• A bug crept in with 1.1 using the default controller directory scanner. The scanner wasn't properly retaining the directory prefix which causes mismatches when using controllers underneath a sub-directory.
• url_for can (and should) be used for all your URL needs, including static files

The second one is pretty important if you're at all interested in creating portable web applications that can be used along-side other applications. While some frameworks provide generation of URL's that lead to other web pages, hard-linking the other ‘static' content will cause problems if you try and use the application under a different mount point.

Instead of using a url like /css/source.css it should instead be generated with url_for('/css/source.css'). This way Routes can ensure that if you're running under a WSGI environment and there's a SCRIPT_NAME present (this indicates the applications location), it will be pre-pended to your absolute URL's. When used like this, additional keyword arguments passed in will be used as query args on the URL making url_for a handy way to create URL's that are properly URL encoded.

Another useful feature that made it into 1.2 allows you to alias URL's you might want to use throughout your web application, I call these static named routes. An example can be found in the named routes section of the Routes Manual.

Enjoy!