prefix loader should behave like virtual subfolder

[Waldemar Kornewald <wkornewald@…>]

The current behavior is inconsistent. Let's imagine I load 'sub/bla.html'. Without prefixes, bla.html thinks it's located in the virtual folder 'sub'. If I have 'layout.html' at the root I have to include it via '../layout.html'. OTOH, with prefixes, bla.html thinks it's at the root although it was included as 'sub/bla.html', so I have to include 'layout.html' (without '../' prefix). That's not really consistent.

Also, if you want to include a template in the same folder you have to put the prefix in front: to load sub/blubb.html from sub/bla.html you have to include 'sub/blub.html' instead of just 'blub.html'.

Please make prefixes behave like subfolders.

[cmlenz]

Replying to Waldemar Kornewald <wkornewald@freenet.de>:

The current behavior is inconsistent. Let's imagine I load 'sub/bla.html'. Without prefixes, bla.html thinks it's located in the virtual folder 'sub'. If I have 'layout.html' at the root I have to include it via '../layout.html'. OTOH, with prefixes, bla.html thinks it's at the root although it was included as 'sub/bla.html', so I have to include 'layout.html' (without '../' prefix). That's not really consistent.

That's because it's different behavior. Which is the point of the whole exercise.

Also, if you want to include a template in the same folder you have to put the prefix in front: to load sub/blubb.html from sub/bla.html you have to include 'sub/blub.html' instead of just 'blub.html'.

Are you sure?

Please make prefixes behave like subfolders.

I'm sorry, but if prefixes would behave like subfolders you could just use subfolders.

[Waldemar Kornewald <wkornewald@…>]

patch that does exactly that

[Waldemar Kornewald <wkornewald@…>]

Replying to cmlenz:

Please make prefixes behave like subfolders.

I'm sorry, but if prefixes would behave like subfolders you could just use subfolders.

Nope. I use prefixes to map subfolders to different components of my website. I can't put all templates of all components into one common folder. Just look at Trac. You have a global trac/templates folder, but also trac/ticket/templates, and so on. Now, you solved the problem of name clashes by prefixing all templates with the component name (e.g., ticket_view.html), but that's redundant and unnecessary. It would be much better if you could simply map the component folders as subfolders ('ticket/view.html'). This is DRY and fully consistent with the behavior of real subfolders. Just, we're modeling a virtual folder structure.

For my purposes it would be even more useful if the prefix 'ticket' would only be recognized as a subfolder instead of a general prefix (IOW, prefix: 'ticket/' or more correctly: 'ticket' + os.sep).

[cmlenz]

Okay, I misunderstood you initially, the prefix loading was indeed broken. It should be fixed by [814].

[Waldemar Kornewald]

Thanks a lot!

What do you think about also (or instead?) providing a prefix loader that handles folder names instead of simple file name prefixes? IOW the current filename.startswith(prefix) would become filename.startswith(prefix + os.sep).

That way, it would behave like a real component mapper without name clashes. Currently, if you have a 'component' prefix and then try to load 'component_manager.html' or 'component_manager/list.html' it might mistakenly use the 'component' prefix. In most real-world apps we'd have to add os.sep manually, anyway, to prevent name clashes.