Consider throwing error when adding routes to consumed trie

[coderabbitai]

Context

When a trie is attached using attachAndConsume, the trie is consumed and subsequent modifications to it are not reflected in the parent trie. Currently, adding routes to a consumed trie after attachment is a silent no-op.

Enhancement Request

Consider throwing an error when attempting to add routes to a consumed trie to make it apparent that the operation has no effect.

References

• PR: feat: Add optional consume flag to attach #309
• Comment: feat: Add optional consume flag to attach #309 (comment)
• Requested by: @SandPod

Related Code

trieB.add(NormalizedPath('/'), 1);
trieA.attachAndConsume(NormalizedPath('/api'), trieB);

// Add a new route to trieB after attachment
trieB.add(NormalizedPath('/new'), 2);  // This is currently a no-op

The suggestion is to throw an error at this point to make the no-op behavior explicit.

[nielsenko]

@coderabbitai It is not a no-op. It is added to trieB, but that is no longer attached to the parent, so parent is not affected.
I'm not sure if this is a feature or a bug. You could keep using trieB if you wanted.

[coderabbitai]

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🧩 Analysis chain

🏁 Script executed:

#!/bin/bash
# Find files related to trie implementation
fd -e dart -t f trie

# Search for attachAndConsume method
rg -nP --type=dart -C10 'attachAndConsume'

# Search for PathTrie class definition
rg -nP --type=dart -C5 'class\s+.*PathTrie'

Length of output: 1023

---

#!/bin/bash
# Get the full PathTrie class implementation to understand attachAndConsume
cat lib/src/router/path_trie.dart

# Look for tests related to attachAndConsume to understand expected behavior
rg -nP --type=dart -C5 'attachAndConsume' test/

---

🧠 Learnings used

Learnt from: nielsenko
Repo: serverpod/relic PR: 48
File: lib/src/handler/handler.dart:59-67
Timestamp: 2025-04-25T07:39:38.915Z
Learning: Nielsenko prefers using switch statements with pattern matching over if statements when working with sealed classes in Dart, as they provide exhaustiveness checking at compile time and can be more concise.

---

Learnt from: nielsenko
Repo: serverpod/relic PR: 52
File: lib/src/router/router.dart:37-53
Timestamp: 2025-05-05T14:40:00.323Z
Learning: In the Router and PathTrie implementation in Dart, both static and dynamic routes consistently throw ArgumentError when attempting to add duplicate routes, despite comments suggesting dynamic routes would be overwritten with a warning.

---

Learnt from: nielsenko
Repo: serverpod/relic PR: 62
File: lib/src/router/router.dart:0-0
Timestamp: 2025-05-09T10:11:33.427Z
Learning: In the Router implementation, re-adding a route with the same path isn't currently allowed and will throw an ArgumentError from _allRoutes.add(), but handling cache invalidation or updates proactively is important for future-proofing in case route updates are later supported.

---

Learnt from: nielsenko
Repo: serverpod/relic PR: 226
File: lib/src/router/relic_app.dart:147-156
Timestamp: 2025-10-20T14:05:34.503Z
Learning: In the relic codebase, hot-reload and other development-time features in lib/src/router/relic_app.dart should fail loudly (raise exceptions) rather than catch and suppress errors, as this helps developers diagnose issues during development.

---

Learnt from: CR
Repo: serverpod/relic PR: 0
File: .github/copilot-instructions.md:0-0
Timestamp: 2025-10-09T16:21:09.310Z
Learning: Applies to lib/**/*.dart : Use router with trie-based matching and symbol-based path parameters (e.g., `#name`, `#age`) for routing