= Request Handlers =

A request handler is a neutral name for what some other frameworks call “controllers” or “views”. It is simply a Python function that accepts the request and response objects as parameters, and returns a response.

{{{
#!python
from diva.templating import output, render

@output('index.html')
def index(request, response):
    return render(message='Hello, world!')
}}}

This defines a function called `index` that will respond to requests by rendering the template `index.html`.

== URL Parts as Parameters ==

Any dynamic parts of the URLs defined in the UrlRouting are passed to the request handler as additional parameters. For example:

{{{
#!python
from datetime import datetime
from diva import app
from diva.templating import output, render

@output('index.html')
def monthly(request, response, year, month):
    return render(month=datetime(year, month, 1))

app.routing.add('/archives/{year:\d+}/{month:\d+}/', monthly)
}}}

Note that in this particular case, the values for `year` and `month` are automatically converted to numbers, due to the use of the `\d+` pattern in the route path.