How can I get a path as a key in express?

Question

My current route lookup is app.get('/s/:key', ..., but there is a good reason to be able to get other keys passed in that same way. It is possible that I'll require getting paths that way as well--so basically I want to capture app.get('/s/:key/more/stuff/here/', ... and be able to read key independently of the /more/stuff/here portion. I don't have an issue with capturing the other parameters as an array of arguments and then concatenating them, but I don't know how to do that--I get 404s if I try to capture anything other than /s/:key with nothing following.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

String routes in expressjs is like a regular expression so with that being said, you can use asterisk * as a wildcard:

app.get('/s/:key/*', function(req, res, next) {
    var key = req.params.key;
    var someOtherParams = req.params[0];
});

Which will be:

• http://example.com/s/1/some/other/stuff - req.params.key = 1, req.params[0] = some/other/stuff

Then from there you can parse your wildcard. Like split it by /.

---

OR if you want to be strict that it should not have other characters than alphanumeric, slashes and dashes, use regex directly on your route. Because on expressjs, you can't do a string route containing a single param with slashes then use regex on it and capture that param. It's a bit odd but you can look at this answer for the explanation.

Anyway, for the code to do a regex on your route:

app.get(/s\/([A-Za-z0-9]+)\/(([A-Za-z\-\/]+)*$)/, function(req, res, next) {
        var key = req.params[0];
        var someOtherParams = req.params[1];
    });

Which is capturing 2 groups (req.params[0]-->([A-Za-z0-9]+) and req.params[1]-->(([A-Za-z\-\/]+)*$)).

The first group is actually your key, and the second group is the param that can contain alpha-numeric, dash and slash. Which you can parse or split by slashes. This way, your route is strict enough to not contain any other characters.

Result will be:

• http://example.com/s/1/some/other/stuff - req.params[0] = 1, req.params[1] = some/other/stuff
• http://example.com/s/1/some-other/stuff - req.params[0] = 1, req.params[1] = some-other/stuff
• http://example.com/s/1/some/other-weird/stuff - req.params[0] = 1, req.params[1] = some/other-weird/stuff
• http://example.com/s/1/some/other/stuff-one - req.params[0] = 1, req.params[1] = some/other/stuff-one
• http://example.com/s/1/some&other/stuff - Error 404, & is not permitted in your regex

Answer 2

Try using this:

app.get('/s/:key/*', function(req, res, next) {
    var key = req.params.key;
    var restAfterKey = req.params[0];
    // Work on response or pass on to next();
}

This way in your request handler callback:

• req.params.key is the value of the :key placeholder
• req.params[0] will hold everything that follows after the :key placeholder