hx-boost and relative URLs

[maiksch]

I have encountered an interesting problem. First, imagine following URL structure:

• /admin
  • /admin/[id] (this redirects to /admin/[id]/scores)
  • /admin/[id]/scores
  • /admin/[id]/answers

I configured all 3 pages to have hx-boost="true" on the body tag and use boosted anchor tags for all my navigation.

Here are the simple steps to reprodure my problem:

0. I load my page on /admin
1. I navigate to admin/[id] (notice how I use a relative path)
2. I get navigated to /admin/[id]/scores successfully
3. I click on a link in the tab bar to navigate "horizontally" to answers (The browser shows /admin/[id]/answers when hovering over the anchor tag)
4. I get a 404, because HTMX tries to load /answers instead of /admin/[id]/answers

Also the other way around:

0. I load my page on /admin/[id]/answers
1. I navigate to /admin (this time with an absolute path)
2. I get navigated to /admin successfully
3. I click on a link to admin/[id] (now a relative path again)
4. I get a 404, because HTMX tries to load /admin/q/[id]/admin/q/[id] (huh?)

Did I miss something in the documentation regarding hx-boost and relative URLs? Because if I remove the hx-boost="true" from my links that navigate "vertically" instead of "horizontally" everything works just fine. Is this type of link structure not possible with boosted links?

[croxton]

I think this is because htmx will use the literal value of the anchor href for the request, rather than the fully-resolved url of the anchor provided by the browser (what you see when you hover over the link). I did introduce fully-resolved hrefs for request URLs in this PR but that change was subsequently reverted for the reasons discussed in that thread.

If you are careful in constructing the urls in your boosted anchors so they are always root-relative or absolute, then you shouldn't encounter this problem.