bottle + CGI always matches / route

I can't get bottle to match any other route than "/" when deploying in a CGI environment. (I'm stuck with the hosting provider, FastCGI or WSGI are not on offer, unfortunately).

Bottle lives in a subdirectory lib - I have dropped the bottle.py from bottle-0.12.18.tar.gz there.

Python is either 3.5.3 (provider) or 3.8.2 (localhost)

I have the following in a .htaccess

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script .py

Options -Indexes

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteRule ^static\/ - [L]  
  RewriteRule .* application.py [L]
</IfModule>

and the following application.py

#!/usr/bin/python3

#setup lib path
import os
import os.path
import sys
if 'SCRIPT_NAME' in os.environ:
    MY_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(os.environ['SCRIPT_FILENAME']))
else:
    MY_DIR = os.environ['PWD']    
sys.path.append(os.path.join(MY_DIR,'lib'))


from bottle import Bottle

app = Bottle()

@app.route('/test')
def test():
    return '<b>matched @app.route("/test") - Testing: One, Two</b>!'

@app.route('/')
def index():
    r = ""
    for p in os.environ.keys():
        r += "{0} : {1}\n".format(p,os.environ[p])
    return '<b>matched @app.route("/")</b>\n<pre>'+r+'</pre>'

app.run(server='cgi')

This always return the output from index(), no matter what URL I request.

From the output

matched @app.route("/")

APP_ENGINE : phpcgi
APP_ENGINE_VERSION : 7.3
AUTH_TYPE : Basic
CFG_CLUSTER : cluster003
DOCUMENT_ROOT : /home/somethinguxiz/www-dev
ENVIRONMENT : production
GATEWAY_INTERFACE : CGI/1.1
HOME : /homez.907/somethinguxiz
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING : gzip, deflate, br
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE : en,de-DE;q=0.7,de;q=0.3
HTTP_ACCEPT : text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
HTTP_DNT : 1
HTTP_FORWARDED : for=51.xxx.xxx.xxx; proto=https; host=dev.something.else
HTTP_HOST : dev.something.else
HTTP_REMOTE_IP : 90.xxx.xxx.xxx
HTTPS : on
HTTP_UPGRADE_INSECURE_REQUESTS : 1
HTTP_USER_AGENT : Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:74.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/74.0
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR : 90.xxx.xxx.xxx
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PORT : 443
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO : https
HTTP_X_PREDICTOR : 1
HTTP_X_REMOTE_IP : 51.xxx.xxx.xxx
HTTP_X_REMOTE_PORT : 64440
HTTP_X_REMOTE_PROTO : https
PATH : /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
PHP_VER : 5_TEST
PWD : /homez.907/somethinguxiz/www-dev
QUERY_STRING : 
REDIRECT_STATUS : 200
REDIRECT_URL : /test
REGISTER_GLOBALS : 0
REMOTE_ADDR : 90.xxx.xxx.xxx
REMOTE_PORT : 17926
REMOTE_USER : csomething
REQUEST_METHOD : GET
REQUEST_URI : /test
SCRIPT_FILENAME : /home/somethinguxiz/www-dev/application.py
SCRIPT_NAME : /application.py
SCRIPT_URI : https://dev.something.else:443/test
SCRIPT_URL : /test
SERVER_ADDR : 51.xxx.xxx.xxx
SERVER_ADMIN : postmaster@dev.something.else
SERVER_NAME : dev.something.else
SERVER_PORT : 443
SERVER_PROTOCOL : HTTP/1.1
SERVER_SIGNATURE : 
SERVER_SOFTWARE : Apache
UID : somethinguxiz

I.e. the script does see the REQUEST_URI yet it does not fire test() but index()!?

Any ideas, pointers?

EDIT: unless it is removed somewhere, PATH_INFO is missing in the above list although it should be there if I understand the CGI specs correctly. It's also what bottle uses in its match() method. It falls back to / if not present (which explains that always index() is called.

EDIT: move solution text to answer

Solution

PATH_INFO is only set if the path goes beyond the cgi script. While my original intent was to have that invisible I have made peace with having an application name here. Plus, there is a difference in having [L] in the rewrite rule compared to [END].

Thus I settled with the following .htaccess:


Options +ExecCGI                                                                                                                     
AddHandler cgi-script .py                                                                                                            
AcceptPathInfo on                                                                                                                    

Options -Indexes                                                                                                                     

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>                                                                                                             
    RewriteEngine On                                                                                                                 
    RewriteOptions IgnoreInherit                                                                                                     
    RewriteBase /                                                                                                              
    RewriteRule ^demo\/(static\/.*)$ $1 [END]                                                                                        
    RewriteRule ^demo(/.*)$ application.py$1 [END]                                                                                   
    RewriteRule ^demo$ application.py [END]                                                                                           
    RewriteRule !^demo$ demo [R,END]                                                                                                  
</IfModule>

It allows to serve static content from httpd while application logic is in application.py - hidden as demo. Anything else redirects to the front door.

Application is at .../demo, Pages within the application are at .../demo/path/to/page, and Ressources served by httpd are at .../demo/static/path/to/ressource