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basehref Shared Field: Logic Tip

03/04/2006 12:18 AM by Chris Toohey

Quick tip here... dealing with <base href>, and Internet Site Substitution Rules.

I'm currently, for www.dominoguru.com or dominoguru.com redirecting all traffic to the database as root-level. As such, I've set my shared basehref field (a Shared Field which is present in all that you see: More Site Mods - non-Domino-branded URLs for the backstory and What to base your links on for more information on the <base href> tag...) to simply the domain, as I'm letting Domino do the rest via the Internet Site Substitution Rules (ISSR for short).

My basehref field has the following formula:


"http://" + @GetHTTPHeader("Host") + "/"

And this is fine, as long as my ISSR do their job... but what if I hit this database with a domain that isn't configured with ISSR to substitute everything after the domain relative to the database? I get errors - 404s all day! Not good - as I might have another domain that could access a particular application or such as part of a suite, and therefore would not particularly be bound to any individual database - read: no ISSRs gang!

To alleviate such issues, I've modified my basehref field formula as appropriate:


hn := @GetHTTPHeader("Host");

@If(hn = "subdomain.serverdomain.net";"http://" + hn + "/"; "http://" + hn + 
"/" + @WebDbName + "/")

subdomain.serverdomain.net, in this case, is my domain, or other ISSR-configured domain, and thus I can use the domain in the <base href> tag - otherwise, I defer to using the entire non-ISSR, @WebDBName-ified pathing!

This is a simple example mind you, and you can modify the above formula to include multiple ISSR-maintained domains/subdomains to ensure that your web applications are accessible via multiple domains and keep those 404s at bay!

About the author: Chris Toohey

Thought Leadership, Web & Mobile Application Development, Solutions Integration, Technical Writing & Mentoring

A published developer and webmaster of dominoGuru.com, Chris Toohey specializes in platform application development, solutions integration, and evangelism of platform capabilities and best practices.