Regular Expression in Node.js Express Router - regex

I have tried to find a way to enter regular expression into an express routing URL and then access the variable portion of the URL through the request object. Specifically I want to route to the url "/posts/" + any number of digits. Is there a way to do this?
Examples:
/posts/54
/posts/2
/posts/546

This should do it:
app.get('/posts/:id(\\d+)', function(req, res) {
// id portion of the request is available as req.params.id
});
EDIT: added regex to path to limit it to digits

I agree with Johnny, my only addition being that you can do this for any number of levels. For example:
app.get('/users/:id/:karma', function(req, res){
//Both req.params.id and req.params.karma are available parameters.
});
You should also check out the express documentation: http://expressjs.com/api.html.
The request section would probably prove quite useful to you.

Related

Express Regex to exclude files from route

I'm trying to write a route in Express that excludes urls ending with extensions:
router.get(/.*(?<!(\..*))$/, function(req, res, next) {
});
But even when my example is accepted https://regexr.com/41qus, Express reject it.
Does anyone know why?

How can I create an Express route that handles URLs that look like this?

app.get('/:service[SOMETHING GOES HERE]', function(req, res, next){
console.log('Service is:', req.params.service);
});
This needs to catch URLs that can look like any one of:
/foo
/foo/bar
/foo/bar/baz
The call back isn't concerned with anything that comes after foo, but ideally should be able to access foo as a parameter called service without having to manually parse the path.
I've been using this to test and still haven't found anything that does exactly that. Closest so far is /:service*.
Edit: No it's not a duplicate of the one where the answer is /:service/* because that doesn't cover /foo.
Using /:service* in actual Express routes does exactly what you want:
/foo maps to { '0': '', service: 'foo' }
/foo/bar maps to { '0': '/bar', service: 'foo' }
/foo/bar/blah maps to { '0': '/bar/blah', service: 'foo' }
The Express Route Tester, for some reason, maps these URL's differently for that these kinds of patterns (it might be configured differently than Express).
You can use the app.use() function for that. Read the doc about path handling for more info. Your code once modified will be:
app.use('/foo', function(req, res, next){
console.log('Service is:', req.params.service);
});
The downside is that you are not going to recover foo as the service parameter.

Express.JS regular expression for example.com/:username

// ex: http://example.com/john_smith
app.get('/^(a-z)_(0-9)', function(req, res) {
res.send('user');
});
// ex: http://example.com/john_smith/messages/1987234
app.get('/^(a-z)_(0-9)/messages/:id', function(req, res) {
res.send('message');
});
I wrote the above code for an app that I want to pass a username as a url variable to node.js like I would do: $username = $_GET['username']; in PHP. I'm not too good at writing regular expressions so I wanted to see if anyone could set me on the right track. Thanks in advance.
From your requirement it doesn't seem like you need a regular expression. Just use a a variable in your rule, like below:
// Grabs whatever comes after /user/ and maps it to req.params.id
app.get('/user/:id', function (req, res) {
var userId = req.params.id;
res.send(userId);
});
If you want to have better control, you could use a regular expression. To grab things you are interested in from the expression, use a capture group (which are typically expressed as a set of matching parenthesis):
// Grabs the lowercase string coming after /user/ and maps it to req.params[0]
app.get(/^\/user\/([a-z]+)$/, function (req, res) {
var userId = req.params[0];
res.send(userId);
});
A little off topic, but here's a really good intro to express.js that will help you understand it better (including how the routes work):
http://evanhahn.com/understanding-express-js/
You're looking for req.params, which is an array of all of the capture groups in the regex.
The capture groups start at 1; req.params[0] is the entire match.

Pre-routing with querystrings with Express in Node JS

I'm trying to use express to parse the querystring in case certain parameters are set and execute a little piece of code, before the actual routing is happening. The use-case is to grab a certain value, that could be set, independant of what link is being used. I use express' functionality to pass the stuff to the next possible rule using next().
So far, I tried - at the very top of all the app.get/post-rule-block:
app.get('[?&]something=([^&#]*)', function(req, res, next) {
var somethingID = req.params.something;
// Below line is just there to illustrate that it's working. Actual code will do something real, of course.
console.log("Something: "+somethingID);
next();
})
app.get('/', site.index);
and also:
app.param('something', function(req, res, next) {
var somethingID = req.params.something;
console.log("Something: "+somethingID);
next();
})
app.get('/', site.index);
Example of what should be triggered:
URL: www.example.com/?something=10239
URL: www.example.com/superpage/?something=10239
URL: www.example.com/minisite/?anything=10&something=10239
Unfortunately, none of my solutions actually worked, and all that happens is, that the next matching rule is triggered, but the little function above is never executed. Anybody have an idea, of how this can be done?
EDIT: I do understand, that the param-example wasn't working, as I'm not using said parameter within any other routing-rule afterwards, and it would only be triggered then.
I also do understand, that logic implies, that Express ignores the querystring and it is normally parsed within a function after the routing already happened. But as mentioned, I need this to be "route-agnostic" and work with any of the URL's that are processed within this application.
express does not allow you to route based on query strings. You could add some middleware which performs some operation if the relevant parameter is present;
app.use(function (req, res, next) {
if (req.query.something) {
// Do something; call next() when done.
} else {
next();
}
});
app.get('/someroute', function (req, res, next) {
// Assume your query params have been processed
});
Ok, there is quite a logical flaw in here. Routing only uses the URL, and ignores the querystring.
The (or better "A") solution is actually this:
app.get('*', function(req, res, next) {
if (req.query.something) {
console.log("Something: "+req.query.something);
};
next();
})
Explanation: As Express is ignoring the querystring for the routing, the only regular expression matching all URL's is "*". Once that is triggered, I can check if said querystring is existing, do my logic and continue the routing matching the next rule by using "next()".
And yes: facepalm

How to validate a complete and valid url using Regex

I have a URL validation method which works pretty well except that this url passes: "http://". I would like to ensure that the user has entered a complete url like: "http://www.stackoverflow.com".
Here is the pattern I'm currently using:
"^(https?://)"
+ "?(([0-9a-z_!~*'().&=+$%-]+: )?[0-9a-z_!~*'().&=+$%-]+#)?" //user#
+ #"(([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}" // IP- 199.194.52.184
+ "|" // allows either IP or domain
+ #"([0-9a-z_!~*'()-]+\.)*" // tertiary domain(s)- www.
+ #"([0-9a-z][0-9a-z-]{0,61})?[0-9a-z]\." // second level domain
+ "[a-z]{2,6})" // first level domain- .com or .museum
+ "(:[0-9]{1,4})?" // port number- :80
+ "((/?)|" // a slash isn't required if there is no file name
+ "(/[0-9a-z_!~*'().;?:#&=+$,%#-]+)+/?)$"
Any help to change the above to ensure that the user enters a complete and valid url would be greatly appreciated.
Why not use a urlparsing library? Let me list out some preexisting url parsing libraries for languages:
Python: http://docs.python.org/library/urlparse.html
Perl: http://search.cpan.org/dist/URI/URI/Split.pm
Ruby: http://www.ensta.fr/~diam/ruby/online/ruby-doc-stdlib/libdoc/uri/rdoc/classes/URI.html#M001444
PHP: http://php.net/manual/en/function.parse-url.php
Java: http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/net/URI.html#URI(java.lang.String)
C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.uri.aspx
Ask if I'm missing a language.
This way, you could first parse the uri, then check to make sure that it passes your own verification rules. Here's an example in Python:
url = urlparse.urlparse(user_url)
if not (url.scheme and url.path):
raise ValueError("User did not enter a correct url!")
Since you said you were using C# on asp.net, here's an example (sorry, my c# knowledge is limited):
user_url = "http://myUrl/foo/bar";
Uri uri = new Uri(user_url);
if (uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeHttp && Uri.IsWellFormedUriString(user_url, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute)) {
Console.WriteLine("I have a valid URL!");
}
This is pretty much a FAQ. You could simply try a search with [regex] +validate +url or just look at this answer: What is the best regular expression to check if a string is a valid URL
I use this regex. It works fine for me.
/((([A-Za-z]{3,9}:(?://)?)(?:[-;:&=+\$,\w]+#)?[A-Za-z0-9.-]+|(?:www.|[-;:&=+\$,\w]+#)[A-Za-z0-9.-]+)((?:/[+~%/.\w-]*)?\??(?:[-+=&;%#.\w])#?(?:[\w]))?)/