webapp2 routes for external links

Question

I want to manage external links in a central place in my app so that if they change I need only change them in one place.

Since I'm already using webapp2s routing, I figured I could use that, and use url_for just like every other link. So, tried the following:

Route('http://www.google.com', name='google', build_only=True)

but when I render the link, like this:

uri_for('google')

It encodes the http:// bit, like this:

http%3A//www.google.com

which means if you use it in a href tag, you end up with a relative link like this:

http://localhost:8080/some/path/http%3A//www.google.com

So, questions are:

• Is webapp2s routing even designed for external links?
• If yes, how to you add absolute URLs?
• If no, is there a similar mechanism for doing so?

Would be nice to use webapp2s routing so I can seamlessly use url_for without having to write another 'same but different' method.

Answer 1

I managed to solve the issue by implementing my own uri_for method, and using that instead

def uri_for(_name, _request=None, *args, **kwargs):
    uri = webapp2.uri_for(_name, _request, *args, **kwargs)
    return urllib.unquote(uri)