Re: URL's for multiple variable functions

* Ian Forbes wrote [2005-11-17 17:29:24 +0200]:
 
> But suppose I want user statistics for the month of November. What do I 
> use for a URL:
> 
> http://myserver/showuserstatistics/<username>/November
> or
> http://myserver/showuserstatistics/<username>?month=November

A more detailed reply I had all cooked up got trashed by a system panic (darn
you, Western Digital), so in a nutshell the second time around:

I'd probably change your url around a little, since its about users and
you'll no doubt have other user-specific UI needs:

    http://myserver/myaccount/
    or..
    http://myserver/my/

Where 'my' is a representation of your user fulfilled by a UserUI object
of your design, exporting a number of methods so you can hang off this...

    http://myserver/my/change
    http://myserver/my/change_password
    http://myserver/my/suspend_subscription
    http://myserver/my/statistics/

.... and statistics will call a StatisticsUI object

    class UserUI:

        ...
        def statistics(self):
            return StatisticsUI(self.user)._q_index()

Which may present a list of available statistics links, or the current (or
just past) month and then links to older records.

    and your stats detail page(s):

    http://myserver/my/statistics/November
    or
    http://myserver/my/statistics/11

    will be returned from a _q_lookup(self, component) method.

But... assuming your site will live on for years, you probably also want to
support urls like this:
    
    http://myserver/my/statistics/2005/11

By the time you are down to the year/month component(s) of your URL, assuming
there's no expected future need for more detail, you could stop traversing
the path using subsequent calls to _q_lookup. In other words, once you have

    2005
    
    or

    2005/11

.... you have what you need to be able to deliver the right response.

You'll find a discussion of this in the archives back in July - follow this
thread: 

http://mail.mems-exchange.org/pipermail/quixote-users/2005-July/045592.html

And perhaps also look at:

http://mail.mems-exchange.org/pipermail/quixote-users/2005-July/049953.html