What URL to code for an image in "public"

[belfasthenry]

My source tree looks (in part) like this:

  MyApp
  +--bin
    +--myapp.pl
  +--public
     +--photos
       +--Sam
          +--somephoto.jpg 

I can't find out how to code the <img> tag to contain a valid URL to that image. All the questions I've found on the web say that files under "public" will be served out via the web pages (that is, "public" is the "docroot" in Apache terms); so I've coded in my template %= image "photos/Sam/somephoto.jpg" but the image doesn't load, and inspecting it in the browser shows "cannot load the image", despite the actual HTML source of the page containing a valid link <img alt="somephoto.jpg" src="photos/Sam/somephoto.jpg">

Pasting http://127.0.0.1:3000/photos/Sam/somephoto.jpg gives a "Page not found ... yet" message. I've also tried /photos ... without success.

What am I doing wrong?

[jberger]

What do you get when you run perl bin/myapp.pl eval -V 'app->static->paths'?

[belfasthenry]

Yes, that's true, although I simplified the structure for the sake of this post: I do have a "lib" directory with a module in it which implements a lot of my functions.

Having understood what I've done, and maybe got some glimmer about what I ought to be doing, can someone recommend where I might read authoritatively about the differences between Mojolicious and Mojolicious::Lite? I've been bitten by this one, and I guess there are others.

[Grinnz]

The Growing guide details the changes necessary to turn a Lite app into a full app. But it's really simpler than you may think; the Lite app is simply a tiny wrapper of a full app that provides a DSL and allows you to use the script file as the application file, and as a result expects that file to be in the project root.

[Grinnz]

By the way, you can click the check-mark in the upper right of this answer to mark it as the answer.

[belfasthenry]

For example, the Tutorial document says it's an "example-driven introduction to the wonders of Mojolicious::Lite.". Then under "Static files" the same document says "External static files ... will be served automatically from a public directory if it exists." But, as I've just discovered the hard way, for a ::Lite application that's not the case.

[Grinnz]

All of that is accurate. Your problem was a misplaced Lite script file.

[Grinnz]

Short answer: /photos/Sam/somephoto.jpg

Long answer: There are three kinds of URLs, absolute, host-relative, and page-relative. You have provided a page-relative URL, so the browser will construct the URL to request depending on the current page path it's on. You want a host-relative URL which starts with a slash, so the browser will request it relative to the root of your application.

[belfasthenry]

I tried that. I probably didn't phrase my original question sufficiently clearly, but I did say towards the end that I'd done so.