NodeJS routes with or without file extensions - javascript

With the following route:
app.get('/', controller.web.Home);
How would I add within '/' something which would allow a match for /, /index and /index.html? I would also like to use this approach for all other routes so that users don't see an error page when adding .html to a path.
I have seen this mentioned on the Express website, however there are no clear explanations for matching multiples. Thanks in advance.

Express uses path-to-regex for routing strings meaning you can use regular expressions or string patterns to match routes.
How would I add within '/' something which would allow a match for /, /index and /index.html
Something like this would work:
app.get('/|index|index.html', controller.web.Home);
I would also like to use this approach for all other routes so that users don't see an error page when adding .html to a path.
You can also write a small helper function that takes care of this for any route:
function htmlExt(route) {
return route + '|' + route + '.html';
}
And the use it for any route:
app.get(htmlExt('index'), controller.web.Home);
app.get(htmlExt('blog'), controller.web.Blog);
// ...
Other approaches
You can also pass in an array of paths instead so this should also work:
function htmlExt(route) {
return [route, route + '.html'];
}
app.get(htmlExt('index'), controller.web.Home);
Another way would be to use a regex. Perhaps one that accepts a route and an optional .html extension:
app.get(/index(.html)?/, controller.web.Home);
You can find other useful examples in Express Routing docs.

You can define an array of paths as the first argument:
app.get(['/', '/index' , '/index.html'], controller.web.Home);

using express 4.x
app.get('/(index*)?', controller.web.Home);
reference
http://expressjs.com/en/guide/routing.html

If you want a global approach you can use a middleware function. Put it before all of your routes.
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
var match = req.path.match(/(.*)\.html$/)
if (match !== null) {
res.redirect(match[1]);
} else {
next();
}
});
It redirects every path ending with .html to a route without this extension.
Of course the route path '/' needs to be handled separately.

Related

How to use exact match in ExpressJs router

I have two routes as follow in my ExpressJs application
router.get("/task/", Controller.retrieveAll);
router.get("/task/seed/", Controller.seed);
If I make a request on /task/seed/ instead of Controller.seed, Controller.retrieveAll is getting called.
So basically router matches the /task/ string before it checks the proceeding string, in my case /seed.
How can I make sure that the router does check the full string (kind of exact match)?
The example you show using router.get() or app.get() does not actually occur. router.get() does not do partial matches unless you're using wildcards or regexes.
I verified that in this simple test app:
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.get("/task/", (req, res) => {
res.send("got /task");
});
app.get("/task/seed", (req, res) => {
res.send("got /task/seed");
});
app.listen(80);
When you request /task/seed, you get the message got /task/seed so, it does route correctly.
On the other hand, router.use() does do partial matches so this problem could occur if your actual code was using .use(), not .get(). In that case, you just need to either switch to the verb-specific .get() instead of using the generic .use() or you need to order your routes from the most specific to the least-specific so that the most-specific declaration gets a chance to match first:
router.use("/task/seed/", Controller.seed);
router.use("/task/", Controller.retrieveAll);
In case you're curious, the two main differences between router.use() and router.get() are:
.get() only matches GET requests while .use() matches all HTTP verbs.
.get() only does full path matches while .use() will match any URL path that starts with what you specify.
Execution of express router middleware functions is sequential. There is no keyword like exact, as we have in react-router to make the router check for exact path match.
To make your code work, and always when creating express routes, have the path with the higher specificity above the path with lesser specificity.
So, this should work:
router.get("/task/seed/", Controller.seed);
router.get("/task/", Controller.retrieveAll);
These earlier StackOverflow answers will be very helpful:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/32604002/6772055
https://stackoverflow.com/a/27317835/6772055

How to create one handler for several urls in Next.js?

I've got some troubles when start working with Next.js
Here is the deal. I have multiple filters, depends on them I make up URL. All of this URL's for one page.
It can be like:
/
/one
/one/two
/one/two/three
This nested is required. How can I create one handler for catch any of these URL's?
I use Express like this, but it doesn't help.
server.get('/*', async (req, res, next) => {
try {
app.render(req, res, '/')
} catch (e) {
next(e)
}
})
Thanks!
Use Dynamic routing like that :
pages/[one]/[two]/[three].js
cf:
Multiple dynamic route segments work the same way.
For example, pages/post/[pid]/[comment].js would match /post/1/a-comment. Its query object would be: { pid: '1', comment: 'a-comment' }.
https://nextjs.org/docs#dynamic-routing
Hope it's help.
New feature introduced in Next.js 9.5
Solution: Rewrites
See also: Redirects & Headers:
Announcing comment: https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/9081#discussioncomment-48301
Besides that I am aware of some wildcard matching that nests paths deep in the default routing, but I feel Rewrites is a better solution in most use cases.
use npm next-routes in order to use path patterns (regex) to bind multiple urls to a page

Node.js:Route precedence and ordering (sails.js)

In my sails.js application i have two routes like this:
'/': {controller:'HomeController',action:'home'},
'GET /:category/:subcategory/:keyword':{controller:'SearchController',action:'index'
When I run the default route (/) it will always execute this route
GET /:category/:subcategory/:keyword .
Why is this happening??
The order of routes in route file is
1) /
2) GET /:category/:subcategory/:keyword
As mentioned in the comment above, your very general route /:category/:subcategory/:keyword is being hit because it must match asset urls on your homepage. This route will match any three-part path, ex:
/images/icons/smiley.png
/scripts/thirdparty/jquery.min.js
Etc!
There would be two approaches to fix this. One would be making your SearchController urls more specific. Maybe /search/:category/:subcategory/:keyword would be a good idea? This is the simplest and should clear up any conflicts with your assets right away.
But if you really need catch-all routes that can interfere with other specific routes, then the solution is to catch the specific routes first. For example, in routes.js:
'GET /images/*': 'RouteController.showAsset',
'GET /scripts/*': 'RouteController.showAsset',
'GET /styles/*': 'RouteController.showAsset',
//...
'GET /:category/:subcategory/:keyword': 'SearchController.index',
Then create a controller RouteController with the method:
showAsset: function(req, res) {
var pathToAsset = require('path').resolve('.tmp/public', req.path);
// ex should be '.tmp/public/images/icons/smiley.png'
return res.sendfile(pathToAsset);
},
You may need to add something in to check for file existence first, but this is the idea.
I found this approach worthwhile when I wanted a /:userName route that would not conflict with all of my /contact, /about, /robots.txt, /favicon.ico, etc. However, it takes work to maintain, so if you think the first approach can work for you, I would use that.

Node Express - Route path colon parameter exception

Currently I have two routes in my app:
/invoice/:invoice returns JSON data of an Invoice document from Mongoose
/invoice/preview returns a preview of an invoice inside an HTML template (note that this doesn't always preview an existing invoice, it could also be a non-existing of which its data is supplied via url parameters, which is why the route cannot be /invoice/:invoice/preview)
Question
There should be a better way to declare these two specific routes, because the /invoice/preview route now calls both handlers, since it matches both regexes.
If we were talking in CSS selectors /invoice/:invoice:not(preview) would be the behavior I want. Unfortunately I don't find any documentation for this.
Is there any way to achieve this or any way to improve this endpoint structure?
Declare more specific routes first:
router.get('/invoice/preview', ...);
router.get('/invoice/:invoice', ...);
Express checks routes in order of declaration, so once it has matched a request against /invoice/preview (and provided that its handler sends back a response), the less-specific /invoice/:invoice won't be considered.
Alternatively, if :invoice should always match a specific pattern (say a MongoDB ObjectId), you can limit the route to requests matching that pattern:
router.get('/invoice/:invoice([a-fA-F0-9]{24})', ...);
That pattern doesn't match "preview", so the order wouldn't matter so much in that case.
If this isn't possible, you could create a middleware that would check if req.params.invoice matches "preview" and, if so, would pass along the request further down the handler chain:
let notIfPreview = (req, res, next) => {
if (req.params.invoice === 'preview') return next('route');
next();
};
router.get('/invoice/:invoice', notIfPreview, ...);
router.get('/invoice/preview', ...);
(documented here)

How do I define individual pages in Express.js

I'm just getting started with express.js and am failing to understand how one defines discrete "pages" (in the traditional sense) that one can link to internally.
I'm using Jade as a template engine and I see how it pulls the various components together and references them in the app.js (which is what is initially invoked by npm) so that, in effect is my "index". Would be great to see a tutorial on what one does to then build out pageA, pageB, pageC so that they can be linked to via <a href="pageA.html"> (or the Jade equivalent).
I'm assuming this is possible, right?
Express.js itself does not offer URL generation, only a built-in router.
You would need to use an additional package to perform URL generation, or build it yourself. Maybe you find something fitting in this question's answers: URL generation for routes in express
If you do not care about route generation and want to "hard code" the URLs, you would need to add a route for each static page, like this:
// routes.js
app.get("/pageA.html", function(req, res, next) { res.render("static/page_a", { templateLocals: "here" }) };
app.get("/pageB.html", function(req, res, next) { res.render("static/page_b") };
Or, if you have many of those pages, you could use a controller for this:
// static_page_controller.js
module.exports = function(pageTemplate) {
return function(req, res, next) {
return res.render("static/" + pageTemplate);
}
}
And use it like this:
// routes.js
var staticController = require("./static_page_controller");
app.get("/pageA.html", staticController("page_a"));

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