# Routing

## Introduction

Masonite Routing is an extremely simple but powerful routing system that at a minimum takes a url and a controller. Masonite will take this route and match it against the requested route and execute the controller on a match.

All routes are created inside `routes/web.py` and are contained in a `ROUTES` constant. All routes consist of either a `Get()` route or a `Post()` route. At the bare minimum, a route will look like:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().route('/url/here', 'WelcomeController@show')
```

{% endcode %}

Most of your routes will consist of a structure like this. All URI’s should have a preceding `/`. Routes that should only be executed on Post requests (like a form submission) will look very similar:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Post().route('/url/here', 'WelcomeController@store')
```

{% endcode %}

{% hint style="info" %}
Notice the controller here is a string. This is a great way to specify controllers as you do not have to import anything into your `web.py` file. All imports will be done in the backend. More on controllers later.
{% endhint %}

If you wish to not use string controllers and wish to instead import your controller then you can do so by specifying the controller as well as well as only passing a reference to the method. This will look like:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
...
from app.http.controllers.DashboardController import DashboardController


ROUTES = [
    Get().route('/url/here', DashboardController.show)
]
```

{% endcode %}

{% hint style="info" %}
It’s important here to recognize that we didn't initialize the controller or the method, we did not actually call the method. This is so Masonite can pass parameters into the constructor and method when it executes the route, typically through auto resolving dependency injection.
{% endhint %}

## Route Options

There are a few methods you can use to enhance your routes. Masonite typically uses a setters approach to building instead of a parameter approach so to add functionality, we can simply attach more methods.

### HTTP Verbs

There are several HTTP verbs you can use for routes:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
from masonite.routes import Get, Post, Put, Patch, Delete

Get().route(...)
Post().route(...)
Put().route(...)
Patch().route(...)
Delete().route(...)
```

{% endcode %}

### **HTTP Helpers**

If the syntax is a bit cumbersome, you just want to make it shorter or you like using shorthand helper functions, then you can also use these:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
from masonite.helpers.routes import get, post, put, patch, delete

ROUTES = [
    get('/url/here', 'Controller@method'),
    post('/url/here', 'Controller@method'),
    put('/url/here', 'Controller@method'),
    patch('/url/here', 'Controller@method'),
    delete('/url/here', 'Controller@method'),
]
```

{% endcode %}

These return instances of their respective classes so you can append on to them:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
get('/url/here', 'Controller@method').middleware(...),
```

{% endcode %}

Most developers choose to use these instead of the classes.

### Route Groups

Sometimes routes can be very similiar such as having many dashboard or profile routes:

```python
ROUTES = [
    Get().route('/home', ...),
    Get().route('/dashboard', ...),
    Get().route('/dashboard/user', ...),
    Get().route('/dashboard/user/@id', ...),
    Get().route('/dashboard/friends', ...),
    ...
]
```

These routes can be grouped using the `group` helper:

```python
from masonite.helpers.routes import group

ROUTES = [
    Get().route('/home', 'DashboardController@show'),
    group('/dashboard', [
        Get().route('/user', ...)
        Get().route('/user/@id', ...)
        Get().route('/user/friends', ...)
    ])
]
```

Notice that this is the same as above and can help organize and group routes. This feature will also be expanded on in future releases of Masonite.

### Named Routes

We can name our routes so we can utilize these names later when or if we choose to redirect to them. We can specify a route name like so:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().route('/dashboard', 'DashboardController@show').name('dashboard')
```

{% endcode %}

It is good convention to name your routes since route URI's can change but the name should always stay the same.

### Route Middleware

Middleware is a great way to execute classes, tasks or actions either before or after requests. We can specify middleware specific to a route after we have registered it in our `config/middleware.py` file but we can go more in detail in the middleware documentation. To add route middleware we can use the middleware method like so:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().route('/dashboard', 'DashboardController@show').middleware('auth', 'anothermiddleware')
```

{% endcode %}

This middleware will execute either before or after the route is executed depending on the middleware.

{% hint style="success" %}
Read more about how to use and create middleware in the [Middleware ](https://docs.masoniteproject.com/1.6/advanced/middleware)documentation.
{% endhint %}

### Deeper Module Controllers

All controllers are located in `app/http/controllers` but sometimes you may wish to put your controllers in different modules **deeper** inside the controllers directory. For example, you may wish to put all your product controllers in `app/http/controllers/products` or all of your dashboard controllers in `app/http/controllers/users`. In order to access these controllers in your routes we can simply specify the controller using our usual dot notation:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().route('/dashboard', 'users.DashboardController@show')
```

{% endcode %}

### Global Controllers

Controllers are defaulted to the `app/http/controllers` directory but you may wish to completely change the directory for a certain route. We can use a forward slash in the beginning of the controller namespace:

```python
Get().route('/dashboard', '/thirdparty.package.users.DashboardController@show')
```

This can enable us to use controllers in third party packages.

## Route Parameters

Very often you’ll need to specify parameters in your route in order to retrieve information from your URI. These parameters could be an `id` for the use in retrieving a certain model. Specifying route parameters in Masonite is very easy and simply looks like:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().route('/dashboard/@id', 'Controller@show')
```

{% endcode %}

That’s it. This will create a dictionary inside the `Request` object which can be found inside our controllers.

In order to retrieve our parameters from the request we can use the `param` method on the `Request` object like so:

{% code title="app/http/controller/YourController.py" %}

```python
def show(self, Request):
    Request.param('id')
```

{% endcode %}

### Route Parameter Options

Sometimes you will want to make sure that the route parameter is of a certain type. For example you may want to match a URI like `/dashboard/1` but not `/dashboard/joseph`. In order to do this we simply need to pass a type to our parameter. If we do not specify a type then our parameter will default to matching all alphanumeric and underscore characters.

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().route('/dashboard/@id:int', 'Controller@show')
```

{% endcode %}

This will match all integers but not strings. So for example it will match `/dashboard/10283` and not `/dashboard/joseph`

If we want to match all strings but not integers we can pass:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().route('/dashboard/@id:string', 'Controller@show')
```

{% endcode %}

This will match `/dashboard/joseph` and not `/dashboard/128372`. Currently only the integer and string types are supported.

### Subdomain Routing

You may wish to only render routes if they are on a specific subdomain. For example you may want `example.com/dashboard` to route to a different controller than `joseph.example.com/dashboard`. To do this we can use the `.domain()` method on our routes like so:

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().domain('joseph').route('/dashboard', 'Controller@show')
```

{% endcode %}

This route will match to `joseph.example.com/dashboard` but not to `example.com/dashboard` or `test.example.com/dashboard`.

It may be much more common to match to any subdomain. For this we can pass in an asterisk instead.

{% code title="routes/web.py" %}

```python
Get().domain('*').route('/dashboard', 'Controller@show')
```

{% endcode %}

This will match all subdomains such as `test.example.com/dashboard`, `joseph.example.com/dashboard` but not `example.com/dashboard`.

If a match is found, it will also add a `subdomain` parameter to the Request class. We can retrieve the current subdomain like so:

{% code title="app/http/controllers/YourController.py" %}

```python
def show(self, Request):
    print(Request.param('subdomain'))
```

{% endcode %}