**Only explicit matches:** With other routers, like [http.ServeMux](http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#ServeMux),
a requested URL path could match multiple patterns. Therefore they have some
awkward pattern priority rules, like *longest match* or *first registered,
first matched*. By design of this router, a request can only match exactly one
or no route. As a result, there are also no unintended matches, which makes it
great for SEO and improves the user experience.
**Stop caring about trailing slashes:** Choose the URL style you like, the
router automatically redirects the client if a trailing slash is missing or if
there is one extra. Of course it only does so, if the new path has a handler.
If you don't like it, you can [turn off this behavior](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.RedirectTrailingSlash).
**Path auto-correction:** Besides detecting the missing or additional trailing
slash at no extra cost, the router can also fix wrong cases and remove
superfluous path elements (like `../` or `//`).
Is [CAPTAIN CAPS LOCK](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Captain+Caps+Lock) one of your users?
HttpRouter can help him by making a case-insensitive look-up and redirecting him
to the correct URL.
**Parameters in your routing pattern:** Stop parsing the requested URL path,
just give the path segment a name and the router delivers the dynamic value to
you. Because of the design of the router, path parameters are very cheap.
**Zero Garbage:** The matching and dispatching process generates zero bytes of
garbage. In fact, the only heap allocations that are made, is by building the
slice of the key-value pairs for path parameters. If the request path contains
no parameters, not a single heap allocation is necessary.
**Best Performance:** [Benchmarks speak for themselves](https://github.com/julienschmidt/go-http-routing-benchmark).
See below for technical details of the implementation.
**No more server crashes:** You can set a [Panic handler](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.PanicHandler) to deal with panics
occurring during handling a HTTP request. The router then recovers and lets the
PanicHandler log what happened and deliver a nice error page.
Of course you can also set **custom [NotFound](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.NotFound) and [MethodNotAllowed](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.MethodNotAllowed) handlers** and [**serve static files**](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.ServeFiles).
Named parameters only match a single path segment:
```
Pattern: /user/:user
/user/gordon match
/user/you match
/user/gordon/profile no match
/user/ no match
```
**Note:** Since this router has only explicit matches, you can not register static routes and parameters for the same path segment. For example you can not register the patterns `/user/new` and `/user/:user` for the same request method at the same time. The routing of different request methods is independent from each other.
**It does!** The router itself implements the http.Handler interface.
Moreover the router provides convenient [adapters for http.Handler](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.Handler)s and [http.HandlerFunc](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.HandlerFunc)s
which allows them to be used as a [httprouter.Handle](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.Handle) when registering a route.
The only disadvantage is, that no parameter values can be retrieved when a
http.Handler or http.HandlerFunc is used, since there is no efficient way to
pass the values with the existing function parameters.
Therefore [httprouter.Handle](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.Handle) has a third function parameter.
Just try it out for yourself, the usage of HttpRouter is very straightforward. The package is compact and minimalistic, but also probably one of the easiest routers to set up.
**NOTE: It might be required to set [Router.HandleMethodNotAllowed](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.HandleMethodNotAllowed) to `false` to avoid problems.**
You can use another [http.HandlerFunc](http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#HandlerFunc), for example another router, to handle requests which could not be matched by this router by using the [Router.NotFound](http://godoc.org/github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter#Router.NotFound) handler. This allows chaining.
But this approach sidesteps the strict core rules of this router to avoid routing problems. A cleaner approach is to use a distinct sub-path for serving files, like `/static/*filepath` or `/files/*filepath`.
## Web Frameworks based on HttpRouter
If the HttpRouter is a bit too minimalistic for you, you might try one of the following more high-level 3rd-party web frameworks building upon the HttpRouter package:
* [Ace](https://github.com/plimble/ace): Blazing fast Go Web Framework