horse-routing

name	horse-routing
description	Guidelines for setting up endpoints, defining path parameters, route wildcards, and structuring HTTP controllers.

Horse Routing

Defining HTTP Endpoints

Horse supports registering endpoints for all standard HTTP verbs using static or instance methods:

THorse.Get('/products', GetProductsHandler);
THorse.Post('/products', CreateProductHandler);
THorse.Put('/products', UpdateProductHandler);
THorse.Delete('/products', DeleteProductHandler);
THorse.Patch('/products', PatchProductHandler);

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Route Parameters

Path parameters are defined using the colon syntax (:param):

• Correct: THorse.Get('/users/:id', GetUserHandler);
• Incorrect: THorse.Get('/users/{id}', GetUserHandler);

Inside the handler, you access the parameter via Req.Params.Items['id'] (or Req.Params['id']).

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Wildcards

Use the wildcard asterisk (*) to match any subpath:

// Matches /public/css/site.css, /public/images/logo.png, etc.
THorse.Get('/public/*', ServeStaticFilesHandler);

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Route Grouping & Prefixes (THorse.Group)

You can group related routes under a common path prefix using THorse.Group. This is highly useful for API versioning (e.g., /v1) and isolating group-level middlewares:

• Prefixing Routes:

  THorse.Group.Prefix('/v1')
    .Get('/products', GetProductsHandler)
    .Get('/customers', GetCustomersHandler);
  

• Group-level Middlewares (Restricted Middlewares): Instead of registering a middleware globally via THorse.Use, you can register it specifically for a group using .Use(). The middleware will only run for endpoints defined inside that group:

  THorse.Group.Prefix('/admin')
    .Use(AuthMiddleware) // Only runs for routes under /admin
    .Get('/dashboard', GetDashboardHandler)
    .Get('/settings', GetSettingsHandler);
  

Route-level Middlewares (Local)

You can pass an array of route-specific middlewares (array of THorseCallback) to apply checks only to a single endpoint. These run after global and group-level middlewares:

• Static routing:

  THorse.Get('/admin/dashboard', [AuthMiddleware, LoggerMiddleware], GetDashboardHandler);
  

• Fluent routing:

  THorse.Route('/reports')
    .Get([AuthMiddleware, LoggerMiddleware], GetReportsHandler)
    .Post([AuthMiddleware], CreateReportHandler);
  

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Grouping with Controllers

To keep routes organized, group them logically within static class methods or dedicated units:

type
  TUserController = class
  public
    class procedure RegisterRoutes;
    class procedure ListUsers(Req: THorseRequest; Res: THorseResponse; Next: TProc);
  end;

class procedure TUserController.RegisterRoutes;
begin
  THorse.Get('/users', ListUsers);
end;