Regex for route matching in Express
Regexnode.jsExpressRegex Problem Overview
I'm not very good with regular expressions, so I want to make sure I'm doing this correctly. Let's say I have two very similar routes, /discussion/:slug/
and /page/:slug/
. I want to create a route that matches both these pages.
app.get('/[discussion|page]/:slug', function(req, res, next) {
...enter code here...
})
Is this the correct way to do it? Right now I'm just creating two separate routes.
someFunction = function(req, res, next) {..}
app.get('/discussion/:slug', someFunction)
app.get('/page/:slug', someFunction)
Regex Solutions
Solution 1 - Regex
app.get('/:type(discussion|page)/:id', ...)
works
Solution 2 - Regex
You should use a literal javascript regular expression object, not a string, and @sarnold is correct that you want parens for alternation. Square brackets are for character classes.
const express = require("express");
const app = express.createServer();
app.get(/^\/(discussion|page)\/(.+)/, function (req, res, next) {
res.write(req.params[0]); //This has "discussion" or "page"
res.write(req.params[1]); //This has the slug
res.end();
});
app.listen(9060);
The (.+)
means a slug of at least 1 character must be present or this route will not match. Use (.*)
if you want it to match an empty slug as well.