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authorLoïc Hoguin <[email protected]>2020-05-20 10:53:52 +0200
committerLoïc Hoguin <[email protected]>2020-05-20 10:53:52 +0200
commit78b23ddfa555136ddf9cd81396e5375845de219c (patch)
tree442ee61f6aa6fcd7805d81af13004111098d2bd4 /doc/src/guide/routing.asciidoc
parent0d0e7d164c72799b48275c0c79a7a9d5c08e652e (diff)
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Clarify the routing algorithm
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/src/guide/routing.asciidoc')
-rw-r--r--doc/src/guide/routing.asciidoc23
1 files changed, 20 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/doc/src/guide/routing.asciidoc b/doc/src/guide/routing.asciidoc
index 9e2ef25..37d3e5a 100644
--- a/doc/src/guide/routing.asciidoc
+++ b/doc/src/guide/routing.asciidoc
@@ -6,9 +6,26 @@ Cowboy does nothing by default.
To make Cowboy useful, you need to map URIs to Erlang modules that will
handle the requests. This is called routing.
-When Cowboy receives a request, it tries to match the requested host and
-path to the configured routes. When there's a match, the route's
-associated handler is executed.
+Cowboy routes requests using the following algorithm:
+
+* If no configured host matches the request URI, a 400 response
+ is returned.
+
+* Otherwise, the first configured host that matches the request
+ URI will be used. Only the paths configured for this host will
+ be considered.
+
+* If none of the configured paths found in the previous step
+ match the request URI, a 404 response is returned.
+
+* Otherwise, the handler and its initial state are added to the
+ environment and the request continues to be processed.
+
+NOTE: It is possible to run into a situation where two hosts match a
+request URI, but only the paths on the second host match the
+request URI. In this case the expected result is a 404 response
+because the only paths used during routing are the paths from
+the first configured host that matches the request URI.
Routes need to be compiled before they can be used by Cowboy.
The result of the compilation is the dispatch rules.