Path templating with dashes and slashes

[theganyo]

I had a couple of issues with path templates in swagger-tools today:

1. You can't have a parameter in your template that has a dash ('-') in it: /path/{Some-ID}. Note that this doesn't get an error on parsing or validation, but it also will not match an incoming request to a path like /path/24. It seems to me that this is probably a bug in either swagger-tools validation or path-matching.

2. A parameter in a template cannot match slashes within the segment. Ie. /path/{SubPath}/end will not match an incoming request to /path/some/sub/end. This seems more likely to be correct, but...

I couldn't find where either of the above examples were explicitly allowed or disallowed in the spec. Did I just miss the definition in the spec? Or are either of these a bug / limitation in swagger-tools?

Thanks!

[whitlockjc]

1. It seems that pillarjs/path-to-regexp does not handle - in the variable name portion of paths. I have opened up a question to see if this should be supported at pillarjs/path-to-regexp/issues/63.
2. It seems to be working as designed for this one.

[whitlockjc]

@webron, can you comment on this? Are there any expected limitations on the characters used in the parameter name for path templates?

[webron]

The Swagger spec doesn't provide specific details about it.

However, following RFC 6570 it looks like characters other than alphanumeric or underscore cannot be used unless they are decoded. I'd leave the decision on whether to support it up to you, but I believe it's ok to not provide support for it.

[mohsen1]

The RFC 6570 limitation is not good enough for Swagger. A path parameter that is just a number (/{1}) doesn't make much sense for example. Other example is %. It should not be allowed in path parameter name since it's going to complicate a lot of things.

[webron]

The RFC limitation would probably have to be good enough for Swagger as I suspect that the next version of the spec would refer to it more explicitly and depend on it for the restrictions and behavior regarding path templating.

[mohsen1]

Is there an open issue/proposal for this?

[webron]

Too many, @mohsen1. Too many :)

[mohsen1]

Could you link on of many to this so we can track it?

[webron]

https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-spec/search?q=6570&type=Issues&utf8=%E2%9C%93 😜

[whitlockjc]

pillarjs/path-to-regexp/issues/63 punted on this and I think I will as well. We can reopen it if someone feels we need to, and by "need" I mean has a current use case for it, not some "it sure would be nice" scenario.

[cjolif]

I do have a use-case :( I was given some guidelines on how to name an API, that guideline include "dash" in path parameters and I can't make it work :(

[cjolif]

@whitlockjc if you don't intend to fix it would there's be a relatively easy way to plugin in the desired behavior into swagger-tools from the outside?

@webron

The RFC limitation would probably have to be good enough for Swagger as I suspect that the next version of the spec would refer to it more explicitly and depend on it for the restrictions and behavior regarding path templating.

I still don't see the spec depending this right? Is there a place I could point people to saying that this might not be a good idea to rely on "-" here?

[whitlockjc]

I'll give it some thought.