# Unicode, Redirects, and More

## Unicode

Routes assumes UTF-8 encoding on incoming URLs, and `url` and `url_for` also generate UTF-8. You can change the encoding with the `map.charset` attribute:

    map.charset = "latin-1"

New in Routes 1.10: several bugfixes.

## Redirect Routes

Redirect routes allow you to specify redirects in the route map, similar to RewriteRule in an Apache configuration. This avoids the need to define dummy controller actions just to handle redirects. It’s especially useful when the URL structure changes and you want to redirect legacy URLs to their new equivalents. The redirection is done by the Routes middleware, and the WSGI application is not called.

`map.redirect` takes two positional arguments: the route path and the destination URL. Redirect routes do not have a name. Both paths can contain variables, and the route path can take inline requirements. Keyword arguments are the same as `map.connect`, both in regards to extra variables and to route options.

    map.redirect("/legacyapp/archives/{url:.*}", "/archives/{url}")

    map.redirect("/legacyapp/archives/{url:.*}", "/archives/{url}")

By default a “302 Found” HTTP status is issued. You can override this with the `_redirect_code` keyword argument. The value must be an entire status string.

    map.redirect("/home/index", "/", _redirect_code="301 Moved Permanently")

New in Routes 1.10.

## Printing

Mappers now have a formatted string representation. In your python shell, simply print your application’s mapper:

    >>> map.collection("entries", "entry")
    >>> print map
    Route name   Methods Path                        Controller action
    entries      GET     /entries{.format}           entry      index
    create_entry POST    /entries{.format}           entry      create
    new_entry    GET     /entries/new{.format}       entry      new
    entry        GET     /entries/{id}{.format}      entry      show
    update_entry PUT     /entries/{id}{.format}      entry      update
    delete_entry DELETE  /entries/{id}{.format}      entry      delete
    edit_entry   GET     /entries/{id}/edit{.format} entry      edit

New in Routes 1.12.

Controller/action fields new in Routes 2.1

## Introspection

The mapper attribute `.matchlist` contains the list of routes to be matched against incoming URLs. You can iterate this list to see what routes are defined. This can be useful when debugging route configurations.

## Other

If your application is behind an HTTP proxy such a load balancer on another host, the WSGI environment will refer to the internal server rather than to the proxy, which will mess up generated URLs. Use the ProxyMiddleware in PasteDeploy to fix the WSGI environment to what it would have been without the proxy.

To debug routes, turn on debug logging for the “routes.middleware” logger. (See Python’s `logging` module to set up your logging configuration.)

## Backward compatibility

The following syntaxes are allowed for compatibility with previous versions of Routes. They may be removed in the future.

### Omitting the name arg

In the tutorial we said that nameless routes can be defined by passing `None` as the first argument. You can also omit the first argument entirely:

    map.connect(None, "/{controller}/{action}")
    map.connect("/{controller}/{action}")

The syntax with `None` is preferred to be forward-compatible with future versions of Routes. It avoids the path argument changing position between the first and second arguments, which is unpythonic.

### :varname

Path variables were defined in the format `:varname` and `:(varname)` prior to Routes 1.9. The form with parentheses was called “grouping”, used to delimit the variable name from a following letter or number. Thus the old syntax “/:controller/:(id)abc” corresponds to the new syntax “/{controller}/{id}abc”.

The older wildcard syntax is `*varname` or `*(varname)`:

    # OK because the following component is static.
    map.connect("/static/*filename/download")

    # Deprecated syntax.  WRONG because the wildcard will eat the rest of the
    # URL, leaving nothing for the following variable, which will cause the
    # match to fail.
    map.connect("/static/*filename/:action")

### Minimization

Minimization was a misfeature which was intended to save typing, but which often resulted in the wrong route being chosen. Old applications that still depend on it must now enable it by putting `map.minimization = True` in their route definitions.

Without minimization, the URL must contain values for all path variables in the route:

    map.connect("basic", "/{controller}/{action}",
        controller="mycontroller", action="myaction", weather="sunny")

This route matches any two-component URL, for instance “/help/about”. The resulting routing variables would be:

    {"controller": "help", "action": "about", "weather": "sunny"}

The path variables are taken from the URL, and any extra variables are added as constants. The extra variables for “controller” and “action” are never used in matching, but are available as default values for generation:

    url("basic", controller="help") => "/help/about?weather=sunny"

With minimization, the same route path would also match shorter URLs such as “/help”, “/foo”, and “/”. Missing values on the right of the URL would be taken from the extra variables. This was intended to lessen the number of routes you had to write. In practice it led to obscure application bugs because sometimes an unexpected route would be matched. Thus Routes 1.9 introduced non-minimization and recommended “map.minimization = False” for all new applications.

A corollary problem was generating the wrong route. Routes 1.9 tightened up the rule for generating named routes. If a route name is specified in `url()` or `url_for()`, only that named route will be chosen. In previous versions, it might choose another route based on the keyword args.

### Implicit defaults and route memory

Implicit defaults worked with minimization to provide automatic default values for the “action” and “id” variables. If a route was defined as `map.connect("/{controller}/{action}/{id}") and the URL "/archives"` was requested, Routes would implicitly add `action="index", id=None` to the routing variables.

To enable implicit defaults, set `map.minimization = True; map.explicit = False`. You can also enable implicit defaults on a per-route basis by setting `map.explicit = True` and defining each route with a keyword argument `explicit=False`.

Previous versions also had implicit default values for “controller”, “action”, and “id”. These are now disabled by default, but can be enabled via `map.explicit = True`. This also enables route memory

### url_for()

`url_for` was a route generation function which was replaced by the `url` object. Usage is the same except that `url_for` uses route memory in some cases and `url` never does. Route memory is where variables from the current URL (the current request) are injected into the generated URL. To use route memory with `url`, call `url.current()` passing the variables you want to override. Any other variables needed by the route will be taken from the current routing variables.

In other words, `url_for` combines `url` and `url.current()` into one function. The location of `url_for` is also different. `url_for` is properly imported from `routes`:

    from routes import url_for

`url_for` was traditionally imported into WebHelpers, and it’s still used in some tests and in `webhelpers.paginate`. Many old Pylons applications contain `h.url_for()` based on its traditional importation to helpers.py. However, its use in new applications is discouraged both because of its ambiguous syntax and because its implementation depends on an ugly singleton.

The `url` object is created by the RoutesMiddleware and inserted into the WSGI environment. Pylons makes it available as `pylons.url`, and in templates as `url`.

### redirect_to()

This combined `url_for` with a redirect. Instead, please use your framework’s redirect mechanism with a `url` call. For instance in Pylons:

    from pylons.controllers.util import redirect
    redirect(url("login"))