Express Router: everything route that allows new routes - node.js

Since express evaluates routes in the order they were added, you should put the more specific routes first.
server.get('/product/:id', router.getProduct);
server.get('/user/:id', router.getUser);
server.get('*', router.notFound);
However, the administrative side of the site needs to be able to create new sections. When a new section is created it is added to the Database, and then a new route is created. However, the * route captures everything and was added before the new section route. Thus, the new section route never matches.
If I remove the * route, then the new section routes do match. My question is how to create a route the matches on 404 requests, without using the * route. Or is there a way to add a route that always matches at the end of the routing matching order?
Any help appreciated.

Since sections can have arbitrary names, you could check for the validity of them in the catch-all handler. It would depend on how exactly your code is set up, but to give an idea:
server.get('/product/:id', router.getProduct);
server.get('/user/:id', router.getUser);
server.get('*', function(req, res, next) {
let sectionName = req.url.substring(1);
Sections.findByName(sectionName, (err, section) {
// Pass errors to the generic error handler.
if (err) return next(err);
// If the section isn't known, pass it along.
if (! section) return next();
// Perform the section code here.
...
});
});
server.use(router.notFound);
In other words: the get('*') route would take the path of the request, remove the leading slash (unless that's part of the section name), look it up in the database, and handle errors or unknown section names.
The final handler will generate a 404 for requests that fell through the section handler.

4xx/5xx error handling is described here - http://expressjs.com/en/guide/error-handling.html

Related

Express route declaration

I have 2 routes such as,
router.get("/project/:id", (req,res) => {
console.log(1);
});
router.get("/project/active", (req,res) => {
console.log(2);
})
Whenever I call the /project/active route, /project/:id route is getting called.
Any tips here would help.
Your wildcard route with :id in it is greedy and is matching everything including the /project/active URL.
In this route definition:
router.get("/project/:id", ...)
The :id part is a wildcard. It matches ANYTHING. So, /project/anything will match that, including /project/active. Since routes are matched in Express in the order they are declared, your router.get("/project/:id", ...) route matches first and takes the request.
There are four ways around this:
Don't design or declare conflicting routes that might both match a particular URL. In this particular case, you would change one of your two URLs to something unique such as /project/id/:id and /project/active or /project/:id and /activeproject. Then, these two route handlers will never conflict.
Very carefully order your routes from the most specific to the least specific. In this case, you would put router.get("/project/active", ...) before router.get("/project/:id", ...). That gives the more specific route a chance to match before the wildcard route gets to take the request. But, note that this means that your id value can never be named active.
If your ids are uniquely identifiable and different from strings like active (like suppose an ID is all numbers or always contains some numbers), then you can code a regex for the ID that would only match your id values and would not match regular words like `active.
Code your wildcard route to individually check for things it should not match and call next() to continue routing to other routes.
That happens because you specify a dynamic route before a specific route.
The right one should be:
router.get("/project/active", (req,res) => {
console.log(2);
});
router.get("/project/:id", (req,res) => {
console.log(1);
});
In Node.js, we know something that is called a middleware stack. Basically, your requests will pass through middlewares until something gives out a response. Routers are also examples of middlewares.
In this case, your route assumes that /active is an id, as you defined /:id first before /active. Different things (should be your expected behavior) would happen if you switched the order.
References:
Middleware Stack

Some Express.Router() routes do not execute middleware function

I'm trying to wrap my head around my implementation of express.router() not triggering of the middleware function assigned to it.
I wrote a pretty big app and trying to add a few more endpoints to my path, but for some reason the 9th route gets loaded but does not trigger the function.
app.js
server.use(cors());
server.use(function (req, res, next) {
next();
});
server.use("/", express.static("./assets"));
server.use("/api", api);
server.use("/debug", debug);
server.use("/config", config);
server.use("/control", control);
server.use("/tools", files);
And this is where I declared my routes with the respective functions.
router.get("/teams", onGetTeams);
router.get("/players", onGetPlayers);
router.get("/achievements", getTop3);
router.get("/xpression", onXprPayload);
router.get("/snapshot", onRequestSnapshot);
router.get("/round-timeline", onRequestTimelinePayload);
router.get("/:half", onRequestHalf);
router.get("/dashboard-message", onSetDashboardMessage);
router.get("/get-match-odds", getTeamOdds);
function getTeamOdds(req, res) {
console.log("Sent odds");
res.json(odds);
res.end();
}
When I make the request for the last route, the function does not get executed, and I get back a 200 response.
Is there something big I'm missing?
Thank you !
Your route definition here:
router.get("/:half", onRequestHalf);
is a wildcard route that matches ALL routes so none of the routes after it will get called unless that specific route calls next() to continue routing.
Top level wildcard routes are problematic for this reason. I would suggest avoiding them. There are temporary work-arounds like moving their definition to be the last top level route definition, but they can still be limiting for defining future routes because they are so greedy.
My recommendation would be to not make it a top level route:
router.get("/half/:half", onRequestHalf);
So, it won't conflict with the other top level routes and it essentially has it's own URL scope all to itself.

Express route: some routes are not recognised [duplicate]

I'm trying to wrap my head around my implementation of express.router() not triggering of the middleware function assigned to it.
I wrote a pretty big app and trying to add a few more endpoints to my path, but for some reason the 9th route gets loaded but does not trigger the function.
app.js
server.use(cors());
server.use(function (req, res, next) {
next();
});
server.use("/", express.static("./assets"));
server.use("/api", api);
server.use("/debug", debug);
server.use("/config", config);
server.use("/control", control);
server.use("/tools", files);
And this is where I declared my routes with the respective functions.
router.get("/teams", onGetTeams);
router.get("/players", onGetPlayers);
router.get("/achievements", getTop3);
router.get("/xpression", onXprPayload);
router.get("/snapshot", onRequestSnapshot);
router.get("/round-timeline", onRequestTimelinePayload);
router.get("/:half", onRequestHalf);
router.get("/dashboard-message", onSetDashboardMessage);
router.get("/get-match-odds", getTeamOdds);
function getTeamOdds(req, res) {
console.log("Sent odds");
res.json(odds);
res.end();
}
When I make the request for the last route, the function does not get executed, and I get back a 200 response.
Is there something big I'm missing?
Thank you !
Your route definition here:
router.get("/:half", onRequestHalf);
is a wildcard route that matches ALL routes so none of the routes after it will get called unless that specific route calls next() to continue routing.
Top level wildcard routes are problematic for this reason. I would suggest avoiding them. There are temporary work-arounds like moving their definition to be the last top level route definition, but they can still be limiting for defining future routes because they are so greedy.
My recommendation would be to not make it a top level route:
router.get("/half/:half", onRequestHalf);
So, it won't conflict with the other top level routes and it essentially has it's own URL scope all to itself.

Express router order of request executions: `/state/:params` vs `/state/absolute-path`

If I have two REST endpoints:
app.get('/something/:id', ...handlers);
app.get('/something/else', ...handlers);
And I send a request to http://host:port/something/else
Is there a way to make Express router execute the endpoint with absolute path first (/something/else) before executing the one that matches the query params (/something/:id)?
I understand that I can reverse the order of invocation and specify the endpoint with query params last. But logically speaking, absolute path should take priority over query params and I believe that's the default behaviour for Koa.js
Just put the more specific route first and the wildcard route second. Routes are matched in order and the first one that matches handles the request and the others are not then processed. So, put the more specific route for /something/else before the /something/:id and you will see the /something/else route work properly when that's the URL.
// put wildcard route last and more specific route definitions first
// routes are matched in the order they are defined
app.get('/something/else', ...handlers);
app.get('/something/:id', ...handlers);
This does raise the question why you have designed this potential conflict into your URL scheme in the first place. You've essentially overloaded the id namespace and have reserved at least one id value for your own use. This can be managed by careful ordering of the route definitions, but it would generally be better if you didn't have this conflict in your URL design in the first place.
Is there a way to make Express router execute the endpoint with absolute path first ('/something/else') before executing the one that matches the query params ('/something/:id')?
Yes, define the more specific route first.
I understand that I can reverse the order of invocation and specify the endpoint with query params last. But logically speaking, absolute path should take priority over query params and I believe that's the default behaviour for Koa.js
You asked about Express. It matches routes in the order you've defined them. It doesn't try to guess which route it "thinks" you want to match first. It lets you define that exactly via the order of your route definitions.
I don't know Koa.js well, but there is this in the doc for Koa2: Middleware is now always run in the order declared by .use() (or .get(), etc.), which matches Express 4 API.
There are no specific route matching rules for express.js to match the routes.It goes and try to match every registered route with incoming request path and calls route handlers for all matched paths. Thus the following code will work.
app.get('/something/:id', (req, res, next) => {
console.log(`Calling with param ${req.params.id}`);
next(); // if you remove next from here it will not call the rest of the handlers
});
app.get('/something/else', (req, res, next) => {
console.log(`Calling with else`);
next();
});
Output:
Thus the only way to make sure the routes match exactly, define routes in their specific order.
app.get('/something/else', ...handlers);
app.get('/something/:id', ...handlers);

Koa-router getting parsed params before hitting route

I'm using koa2 and koa-router together with sequelize on top. I want to be able to control user access based on their roles in the database, and it's been working somewhat so far. I made my own RBAC implementation, but I'm having some trouble.
I need to quit execution BEFORE any endpoint is hit if the user doesn't have access, considering endpoints can do any action (like inserting a new item etc.). This makes perfect sense, I realize I could potentially use transactions with Sequelize, but I find that would add more overhead and deadline is closing in.
My implementation so far looks somewhat like the following:
// initialize.js
initalizeRoutes()
initializeServerMiddleware()
Server middleware is registered after routes.
// function initializeRoutes
app.router = require('koa-router')
app.router.use('*', access_control(app))
require('./routes_init')
routes_init just runs a function which recursively parses a folder and imports all middleware definitions.
// function initializeServerMiddleware
// blah blah bunch of middleware
app.server.use(app.router.routes()).use(app.router.allowedMethods())
This is just regular koa-router.
However, the issue arises in access_control.
I have one file (access_control_definitions.js) where I specify named routes, their respective sequelize model name, and what rules exists for the route. (e.g. what role, if the owner is able to access their own resource...) I calculate whether the requester owns a resource by a route param (e.g. resource ID is ctx.params.id). However, in this implementation, params don't seem to be parsed. I don't think it's right that I have to manually parse the params before koa-router does it. Is anyone able to identify a better way based on this that would solve ctx.params not being filled with the actual named parameter?
edit: I also created a GitHub issue for this, considering it seems to me like there's some funny business going on.
So if you look at router.js
layerChain = matchedLayers.reduce(function(memo, layer) {
memo.push(function(ctx, next) {
ctx.captures = layer.captures(path, ctx.captures);
ctx.params = layer.params(path, ctx.captures, ctx.params);
ctx.routerName = layer.name;
return next();
});
return memo.concat(layer.stack);
}, []);
return compose(layerChain)(ctx, next);
What it does is that for every route function that you have, it add its own capturing layer to generate the params
Now this actually does make sense because you can have two middleware for same url with different parameters
router.use('/abc/:did', (ctx, next) => {
// ctx.router available
console.log('my request came here too', ctx.params.did)
if (next)
next();
});
router.get('/abc/:id', (ctx, next) => {
console.log('my request came here', ctx.params.id)
});
Now for the first handler a parameter id makes no sense and for the second one parameter did doesn't make any sense. Which means these parameters are specific to a handler and only make sense inside the handler. That is why it makes sense to not have the params that you expect to be there. I don't think it is a bug
And since you already found the workaround
const fromRouteId = pathToRegexp(ctx._matchedRoute).exec(ctx.captures[0])
You should use the same. Or a better one might be
var lastMatch = ctx.matched[ctx.matched.length-1];
params = lastMatch.params(ctx.originalUrl, lastMatch.captures(ctx.originalUrl), {})

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