id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
14228	APPEND_SLASH behaviour should be documented better	ttencate@…	Gabriel Hurley	"Current docs say:

{{{
APPEND_SLASH

Default: True

Whether to append trailing slashes to URLs. This is only used if
CommonMiddleware is installed (see Middleware). See also PREPEND_WWW.
}}}

This is not the complete story: a slash is appended ''only'' if the URL without slash does not match any in the urlconf. This becomes an issue if the urlconf has patterns that are subsets of other patterns, like this:

{{{
#!python
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^blog/', 'blog.views.index'),
    (r'^(?P<pagename>\w+)/', 'pages.views.page'),
}}}

Even though `pages.views.page` does not know a page named `blog`, and would thus return a 404, `APPEND_SLASHES` will recognize `/blog` as a valid URL and not append the slash. I realize that this cannot be solved without actually running the view (which we don't want to do), but this behaviour should be documented.

A note about the fact that a HTTP redirect happens (and thus a round trip to the client) would also be nice.

Suggested wording:

{{{
APPEND_SLASH

Default: True

Whether to append trailing slashes to URLs. If an URL does not match
any of the patterns in the URLconf, and it doesn't end in a slash, a
HTTP redirect is issued to the same URL with the slash appended.
(Note that data in a POST request will be lost, which might not be
what you want.) The APPEND_SLASH setting is only used if
CommonMiddleware is installed (see Middleware). See also PREPEND_WWW.
}}}"		closed	Documentation	1.2		fixed			Accepted	0	0	0	0	0	0