[Catalyst] Multiple actions matching a request - what happens?

[Gianni Ceccarelli]

Imagine you have a set of actions that match the same request. Maybe
they have the same :Path, or maybe you're using
Catalyst::ActionRole::MatchRequestMethod or something similar, and you
do:

  sub post_foo :Path('foo') Method('POST') { }
  sub other_foo :Path('foo') { }

intending for the 'other_foo' action to be invoked when the method is
not POST.

This will sometimes work and sometimes not. I have dug a bit in the
source, and it looks like this:

- Catalyst::Controller::register_actions calls
  Catalyst::Controller::get_action_methods

  - which gets the methods from
    MooseX::MethodAttributes::Role::Meta::Class::get_nearest_methods_with_attributes

  - which sorts the method it returns in the order they were declared

- register_actions will call register_action_methods which will call
  Catalyst::Dispatcher::register for each method in the order they
  were received

- the Dispatcher will register the action with every DispatchType that
  wants it

- Catalyst::DispatchType::Path sorts actions by
  Catalyst::Action::compare, that is, by Args count

- which essentially means that if you have two Path actions for the
  same Path, and both match, which one gets called is
  implementation-dependent (at the moment, it looks like the last one
  declared will win)

Now, this may or may not be a problem. I have a work-around: rework
the controller to have the actions be :Path(''), then use a :Default
action to catch "everything else".

On the other hand, maybe I'm not the only one doing such crazy things
with the dispatcher, and maybe we could add a :Priority($number)
attribute to actions, and have the Catalyst::Action::compare method
use it to break ties.

Did I make any sense?

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the infinite. 

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