getAppMapping and a root site

I’ve been finding sample code and even some documentation that suggests using this or it’s public variable in some of my pathing notations in order to provide some relocation freedom in case my site moves around…but when I’m acting as a root site, there is no app mapping value…because I’m at the root…thus some of these example notations:

#getappMapping()#.model.user

fail because getappMapping() == “”. What do I do in this situation? An even better example might be that I do my development in localhost/myapp but later will deploy that code to a root site on another server.

Mike