Challenge: Broken Routing

Difficulty: Beginner
Bugs: 2
Time: 45 minutes

The Problem

The routing system has two bugs that prevent certain routes from working correctly.

Setup

cp routes/routes.php routes/routes.php.backup

cp challenges/broken-routing/routes/routes.php routes/
cp -r challenges/broken-routing/Http/controllers/posts Http/controllers/

php artisan serve

Bug #1: Route Order Problem

The Symptom

Visiting /posts/create shows the post detail page instead of the create form.

What's Happening

// Current (broken) order
$router->get('/posts/{id}', 'posts/show.php');
$router->get('/posts/create', 'posts/create.php'); // Never matches!

The router matches /posts/create against /posts/{id} first, treating "create" as an ID.

Why It's Broken

The router checks routes in the order they're defined. When it sees /posts/create:

1. Checks /posts/{id} - Matches! (with id = "create")
2. Never checks /posts/create

The Fix

Move specific routes before generic routes:

// ✅ CORRECT ORDER
$router->get('/posts/create', 'posts/create.php');  // Specific first
$router->get('/posts/{id}', 'posts/show.php');      // Generic after

Bug #2: Missing Route Registration

The Symptom

Visiting /posts/1/edit returns 404 Not Found.

What's Happening

// The route is commented out!
// $router->get('/posts/{id}/edit', 'posts/edit.php');

The route exists in the controller but is not registered in routes.php.

Why It's Broken

Routes must be explicitly registered to work. The router doesn't automatically discover controllers.

The Fix

Uncomment the route:

$router->get('/posts/{id}/edit', 'posts/edit.php');

Verification

After fixing both bugs, run verification:

php artisan verify broken-routing

Expected output:

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║           DALT Challenge Verification System                ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Verifying: broken-routing
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✓ Route get /posts/create exists
✓ Route get /posts/{id}/edit exists
✓ Route order correct: specific before generic
✓ No problematic code found

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Results: 4/4 tests passed
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✅ All tests passed! Challenge complete!

Success Criteria

When fixed correctly:

• ✅ /posts shows all posts
• ✅ /posts/create shows the create form
• ✅ /posts/1 shows post #1
• ✅ /posts/1/edit shows the edit form
• ✅ No 404 errors on valid routes

Learning Objectives

After completing this challenge, you understand:

• ✅ Why route order matters
• ✅ How the router matches patterns
• ✅ How to debug 404 errors
• ✅ How route parameters work
• ✅ The importance of explicit route registration

Debugging Tips

View All Routes

// In routes/routes.php
dd($router->routes);

Test Route Matching

// Add to Router::route() method
dd([
    'uri' => $uri,
    'method' => $method,
    'routes' => $this->routes[$method] ?? []
]);

Check Route Order

Look at the order routes are defined in routes/routes.php. Specific routes should always come before generic ones.

Files to Investigate

• routes/routes.php - Route definitions (bugs are here!)
• framework/Core/Router.php - Route matching logic
• Http/controllers/posts/ - Controllers expecting these routes

Cleanup

After completing the challenge:

# Restore original routes
cp routes/routes.php.backup routes/routes.php

# Remove challenge controllers (optional)
rm -rf Http/controllers/posts

Next Challenge

Continue to Lesson 3: Middleware or try Challenge: Broken Middleware.