[dancer-users] Triggering 404 error from a hook

[Warren Young]

On Nov 9, 2015, at 6:35 PM, Hermann Calabria <hermann at ivouch.com> wrote:
> 
> # Figure out client, if any
> my $client = param('client') || '';
> unless ($client =~ /^[a-z0-9]{2,20}$/) {
>   $client = ''; }
>  
> # If $client, get client dbh
> if ($client) {

Two lines replaces all that:

  my $client = param('client') || ‘';
  if ($client =~ /^[a-z0-9]{2,20}$/) {

>     eval {
>       var dbh => database({
>         driver => "mysql",
>         host => "localhost",
>         dbi_params => ...
>         database => "s_".$client,
>         ...
>         });
>       }

You should be caching database connections.  Re-opening it on each and every hit is a bit expensive, even for a localhost connection.

> I’d like Dancer to gracefully fall through to a 404 error

Why 404?  That means the URI names a nonexistent resource, which is more appropriate for something like SELECT … = 0 records.  This feels more like a 500 error.

Unless, that is, “missing customer DB” is something you expect your users to run into.

> I’ve tried “pass” and “forward”, but I receive a cryptic “Internal Server Error” which I assume is because these keywords are not valid within hooks, but I’m not sure.

Try send_error() instead.  If it works, it’s more sensible anyway.