Dynamic routing depending on version number - node.js

I am working on a web api on node.js using the Express3 framework and I would want my routing to look something like /v0.1/function.
Ideally, the routing should automatically load the specified version module by looking at the major and minor version number given in the url. My approach so far is:
app.use('/v:major.:minor', function(req) {
return require('./v' + req.params.major + '.' +
req.params.minor);
});
And in my ./v0.1/index.js:
module.exports = function() {
var express = require('express'),
app = express();
app.get('/test', function(req, res) {
res.json({ success: true });
});
return app;
}();
If I call /v0.1/test now, it somehow does not match the route (404), but app.get('/v:major.:minor', function(req, res) { /* ... */ }); is working just fine.
How can I achieve this?

I think you want app.all (http://expressjs.com/api.html#app.all)
This will make is accessible for all HTTP Verbs and still have the variable routing working.
I tested it and it seems to work.
Edited as per comment
app.all('/v:major.:minor/:endpoint', function(req, res, next) {
var version_handler = require('./v' + req.params.major + '.' + req.params.minor);
if (!req.params.endpoint in version_handler) // endpoint_isn't supported at this version, 404
version_handler[req.params.endpoint](req, res, next);
});

You have to use app.param(). From the example in express API :
app.param('id', /^\d+$/);
app.get('/user/:id', function(req, res){
res.send('user ' + req.params.id);
});
You must provide the regular expression for your parameter in URL, since major, minor both are non negative integers /^\d+$/ should be it for you.

The Simplest way I found is chain a custom middleware:
Something like this:
app.use('/api/:version', function (req, res, next) {
console.log('The version name is : ', req.params.version)
req.version=req.params.version; //use this inside api router
next() // pass control to the next handler
},api);
api is your router object

Related

Arabic URL route using express web framework?

I have a problem getting express to render a page using an arabic url route:
app.get('/شقق-في-لندن', function(req, res){
res.render('apartments');
});
when I try access this using the browser localhost:5000/شقق-في-لندن i get an error saying not found.
Cannot GET /%D8%B4%D9%82%D9%82-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D9%84%D9%86%D8%AF%D9%86
You have two options:
a) Write a middleware (executing before routing) that URL-decodes the UTF8 characters in URL and updates req.url
Advantage: Any subsequent middleware you write can refer to the original UTF-8 characters
Crude example:
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
req.url = decodeURI(req.url);
next();
});
[OR]
b) Change route(s) to match the URL-encoded versions like so
app.get('/%D8%B4%D9%82%D9%82-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D9%84%D9%86%D8%AF%D9%86', function(req, res){
res.render('apartments');
});
or more elegantly:
app.get('/'+encodeURIComponent('شقق-في-لندن'), function(req, res){
res.render('apartments');
});
You could use request params and check for the url like the following
app.get('/:arabic_url', function(req, res , next ){
if(req.params.arabic_url !== 'شقق-في-لندن') {
return next();
}
res.render('apartments');
});
I found A problem with my current implementation and I recommend the way #Vasan because in my impementation the order of your routes will cause an error , unexpected behaviour and redundancy.
Here is the right solution
app.get('/' + encodeURIComponent('شقق-في-لندن') , function(req, res){
res.render('apartments');
});

I would like to add a query param apikey for all my external call

I have a server in express and it uses an external api. I would like for each request to that api ('/api/*'), that it appends a query param in the url without to write it for each requests.
app.use(function(req, res) {
req.query.key = process.env.APIKEY;
});
I tried something like that but it doesn't work.
I thought of doing something like :
app.get('/api/stuff', addApiKey, api.stuff);
Is there a better way?
You need to supply your middleware function with a next callback:
function addApiKey(req, res, next) {
req.query.key = process.env.APIKEY;
next();
});
app.get('/api/:endpoint', addApiKey, function(req, res) {
// do your stuff here
});

Expressjs router based on Content-Type header

For routing, I'd like my middleware to pass the request the routes defined in a /html folder to server HTML(ejs), and if header Content-Type is application/json, use the routes defined in the /api folder.
But I don't want to have to define that in every route.
So I'm not looking for middleware that defines some req.api property that I can check on in every route
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
if(req.api_call) {
// serve api
} else {
// serve html
}
});
But I'd like something like this:
// HTML folder
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
res.send('hi');
});
// API folder
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
res.json({message: 'hi'});
});
Is this possible and if so, how can I do this?
I'd like it to work something like this:
app.use(checkApiCall, apiRouter);
app.use(checkHTMLCall, htmlRouter);
You can insert as the first middleware in the Express chain, a middleware handler that checks the request type and then modifies the req.url into a pseudo URL by adding a prefix path to it. This modification will then force that request to go to only a specific router (a router set up to handle that specific URL prefix). I've verified this works in Express with the following code:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.listen(80);
var routerAPI = express.Router();
var routerHTML = express.Router();
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
// check for some condition related to incoming request type and
// decide how to modify the URL into a pseudo-URL that your routers
// will handle
if (checkAPICall(req)) {
req.url = "/api" + req.url;
} else if (checkHTMLCall(req)) {
req.url = "/html" + req.url;
}
next();
});
app.use("/api", routerAPI);
app.use("/html", routerHTML);
// this router gets hit if checkAPICall() added `/api` to the front
// of the path
routerAPI.get("/", function(req, res) {
res.json({status: "ok"});
});
// this router gets hit if checkHTMLCall() added `/api` to the front
// of the path
routerHTML.get("/", function(req, res) {
res.end("status ok");
});
Note: I did not fill in the code for checkAPICall() or checkHTMLCall() because you were not completely specific about how you wanted those to work. I mocked them up in my own test server to see that the concept works. I assume you can provide the appropriate code for those functions or substitute your own if statement.
Prior Answer
I just verified that you can change req.url in Express middleware so if you have some middleware that modifies the req.url, it will then affect the routing of that request.
// middleware that modifies req.url into a pseudo-URL based on
// the incoming request type so express routing for the pseudo-URLs
// can be used to distinguish requests made to the same path
// but with a different request type
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
// check for some condition related to incoming request type and
// decide how to modify the URL into a pseudo-URL that your routers
// will handle
if (checkAPICall(req)) {
req.url = "/api" + req.url;
} else if (checkHTMLCall(req)) {
req.url = "/html" + req.url;
}
next();
});
// this will get requests sent to "/" with our request type that checkAPICall() looks for
app.get("/api/", function(req, res) {
res.json({status: "ok"});
});
// this will get requests sent to "/" with our request type that checkHTMLCall() looks for
app.get("/html/", function(req, res) {
res.json({status: "ok"});
});
Older Answer
I was able to successfully put a request callback in front of express like this and see that it was succesfully modifying the incoming URL to then affect express routing like this:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
// test modifying the URL before Express sees it
// this could be extended to examine the request type and modify the URL accordingly
req.url = "/api" + req.url;
return app.apply(this, arguments);
});
server.listen(80);
app.get("/api/", function(req, res) {
res.json({status: "ok"});
});
app.get("/html/", function(req, res) {
res.end("status ok");
});
This example (which I tested) just hardwires adding "/api" onto the front of the URL, but you could check the incoming request type yourself and then make the URL modification as appropriate. I have not yet explored whether this could be done entirely within Express.
In this example, when I requested "/", I was given the JSON.
To throw my hat in the ring, I wanted easily readable routes without having .json suffixes everywhere.
router.get("/foo", HTML_ACCEPTED, (req, res) => res.send("<html><h1>baz</h1><p>qux</p></html>"))
router.get("/foo", JSON_ACCEPTED, (req, res) => res.json({foo: "bar"}))
Here's how those middlewares work.
function HTML_ACCEPTED (req, res, next) { return req.accepts("html") ? next() : next("route") }
function JSON_ACCEPTED (req, res, next) { return req.accepts("json") ? next() : next("route") }
Personally I think this is quite readable (and therefore maintainable).
$ curl localhost:5000/foo --header "Accept: text/html"
<html><h1>baz</h1><p>qux</p></html>
$ curl localhost:5000/foo --header "Accept: application/json"
{"foo":"bar"}
Notes:
I recommend putting the HTML routes before the JSON routes because some browsers will accept HTML or JSON, so they'll get whichever route is listed first. I'd expect API users to be capable of understanding and setting the Accept header, but I wouldn't expect that of browser users, so browsers get preference.
The last paragraph in ExpressJS Guide talks about next('route'). In short, next() skips to the next middleware in the same route while next('route') bails out of this route and tries the next one.
Here's the reference on req.accepts.

Forward request to alternate request handler instead of redirect

I'm using Node.js with express and already know the existence of response.redirect().
However, I'm looking for more of a forward() functionality similar to java that takes the same parameters as redirect, but internally forwards the request instead of having the client perform the redirect.
To clarify, I am not doing a proxy to a different server. I'd like to forward('/other/path') directly within the same app instance
It wasn't apparently obvious how to do this from the express documentation. Any help?
You just need to invoke the corresponding route handler function.
Option 1: route multiple paths to the same handler function
function getDogs(req, res, next) {
//...
}}
app.get('/dogs', getDogs);
app.get('/canines', getDogs);
Option 2: Invoke a separate handler function manually/conditionally
app.get('/canines', function (req, res, next) {
if (something) {
//process one way
} else {
//do a manual "forward"
getDogs(req, res, next);
}
});
Option 3: call next('route')
If you carefully order your router patterns, you can call next('route'), which may achieve what you want. It basically says to express 'keep moving on down the router pattern list', instead of a call to next(), which says to express 'move down the middleware list (past the router)`.
You can implement forward (aka rewrite) functionality by changing request url property and calling next('route').
Note that the handler performing forward needs to be configured before other routes which you perform forwards to.
This is example of forwarding all *.html documents to routes without .html extension (suffix).
function forwards(req, res, next) {
if (/(?:.+?)\.html$/.test(req.url)) {
req.url = req.url.replace(/\.html$/, '');
}
next('route');
}
You call next('route') as the last operation. The next('route') passes control to subsequent routes.
As mentioned above, you need to configure forwards handler as one of the first handlers.
app.get('*', forwards);
// ...
app.get('/someroute', handler);
The above example will return the same content for /someroute as well as /someroute.html. You could also provide an object with a set of forward rules ({ '/path1': '/newpath1', '/path2': '/newpath2' }) and use them in forward mechanism.
Note that regular expression used in forwards function is simplified for mechanism presentation purposes. You would need to extend it (or perform check on req.path) if you would like to use querystring parameters etc.
I hope that will help.
For Express 4+
Using the next function does not work if the next handler is not added in the right order. Instead of using next, I use the router to register the handlers and call
app.get("/a/path", function(req, res){
req.url = "/another/path";
app.handle(req, res);
}
Or for HTML5 mode of React/Angular
const dir = process.env.DIR || './build';
// Configure http server
let app = express();
app.use('/', express.static(dir));
// This route sends a 404 when looking for a missing file (ie a URL with a dot in it)
app.all('/*\.*', function (req, res) {
res.status(404).send('404 Not found');
});
// This route deals enables HTML5Mode by forwarding "missing" links to the index.html
app.all('/**', function (req, res) {
req.url = 'index.html';
app.handle(req, res);
});
Using the next function does not work if the next handler is not added in the right order. Instead of using next, I use the router to register the handlers and call
router.get("/a/path", function(req, res){
req.url = "/another/path";
router.handle(req, res);
}
Express 4+ with nested routers
Instead of having to use the outside of route/function app, you can use req.app.handle
"use strict";
const express = require("express");
const app = express();
//
// Nested Router 1
//
const routerOne = express.Router();
// /one/base
routerOne.get("/base", function (req, res, next) {
res.send("/one/base");
});
// This routes to same router (uses same req.baseUrl)
// /one/redirect-within-router -> /one/base
routerOne.get("/redirect-within-router", function (req, res, next) {
req.url = "/base";
next();
});
// This routes to same router (uses same req.baseUrl)
// /one/redirect-not-found -> /one/two/base (404: Not Found)
routerOne.get("/redirect-not-found", function (req, res, next) {
req.url = "/two/base";
next();
});
// Using the full URL
// /one/redirect-within-app -> /two/base
routerOne.get("/redirect-within-app", function (req, res, next) {
req.url = "/two/base";
// same as req.url = "/one/base";
//req.url = req.baseUrl + "/base";
req.app.handle(req, res);
});
// Using the full URL
// /one/redirect-app-base -> /base
routerOne.get("/redirect-app-base", function (req, res, next) {
req.url = "/base";
req.app.handle(req, res);
});
//
// Nested Router 2
//
const routerTwo = express.Router();
// /two/base
routerTwo.get("/base", function (req, res, next) {
res.send("/two/base");
});
// /base
app.get("/base", function (req, res, next) {
res.send("/base");
});
//
// Mount Routers
//
app.use("/one/", routerOne);
app.use("/two/", routerTwo);
// 404: Not found
app.all("*", function (req, res, next) {
res.status(404).send("404: Not Found");
});
app.get('/menzi', function (req, res, next) {
console.log('menzi2');
req.url = '/menzi/html/menzi.html';
// res.redirect('/menzi/html/menzi.html');
next();
});
This is my code:when user enter "/menzi",the server will give the page /menzi/html/menzi.html to user, but the url in the browser will not change;
You can use run-middleware module exactly for that. Just run the handler you want by using the URL & method & data.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/run-middleware
For example:
app.runMiddleware('/get-user/20',function(code,body,headers){
res.status(code).send(body)
})

Is it possible to set a base URL for NodeJS app?

I want to be able to host multiple NodeJS apps under the same domain, without using sub-domains (like google.com/reader instead of images.google.com). The problem is that I'm always typing the first part of the url e.g. "/reader" in Express/NodeJS.
How can I set up an Express app so that the base URL is something.com/myapp?
So instead of:
app.get("/myapp", function (req, res) {
// can be accessed from something.com/myapp
});
I can do:
// Some set-up
app.base = "/myapp"
app.get("/", function (req, res) {
// can still be accessed from something.com/myapp
});
I'd also like to configure Connect's staticProvider to behave the same way (right now it defaults to serving static files to something.com/js or something.com/css instead of something.com/myapp/js)
The express router can handle this since 4.0
http://expressjs.com/en/api.html#router
http://bulkan-evcimen.com/using_express_router_instead_of_express_namespace.html
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var router = express.Router();
// simple logger for this router's requests
// all requests to this router will first hit this middleware
router.use(function(req, res, next) {
console.log('%s %s %s', req.method, req.url, req.path);
next();
});
// this will only be invoked if the path ends in /bar
router.use('/bar', function(req, res, next) {
// ... maybe some additional /bar logging ...
next();
});
// always invoked
router.use(function(req, res, next) {
res.send('Hello World');
});
app.use('/foo', router);
app.listen(3000);
Previous answer (before express 4.0) :
The express-namespace module (dead now) used to do the trick :
https://github.com/visionmedia/express-namespace
require('express-namespace');
app.namespace('/myapp', function() {
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
// can be accessed from something.com/myapp
});
});
At the moment this is not supported, and it's not easy to add it on your own.
The whole routing stuff is buried deep inside the server code, and as a bonus there's no exposure of the routes them selfs.
I dug through the source and also checked out the latest version of Express and the Connect middleware, but there's still no support for such functionality, you should open a issue either on Connect or Express itself.
Meanwhile...
Patch the thing yourself, here's a quick and easy way with only one line of code changed.
In ~/.local/lib/node/.npm/express/1.0.0/package/lib/express/servers.js, search for:
// Generate the route
this.routes[method](path, fn);
This should be around line 357, replace that with:
// Generate the route
this.routes[method](((self.settings.base || '') + path), fn);
Now just add the setting:
app.set('base', '/myapp');
This works fine with paths that are plain strings, for RegEx support you will have to hack around in the router middleware yourself, better file an issue in that case.
As far as the static provider goes, just add in /mypapp when setting it up.
Update
Made it work with RegExp too:
// replace
this.routes[method](baseRoute(self.settings.base || '', path), fn);
// helper
function baseRoute(base, path) {
if (path instanceof RegExp) {
var exp = RegExp(path).toString().slice(1, -1);
return new RegExp(exp[0] === '^' ? '^' + base + exp.substring(1) : base + exp);
} else {
return (base || '') + path;
}
}
I only tested this with a handful of expressions, so this isn't 100% tested but in theory it should work.
Update 2
Filed an issue with the patch:
https://github.com/visionmedia/express/issues/issue/478
Just to update the thread, now with Express.js v4 you can do it without using express-namespace:
var express = require('express'),
forumRouter = express.Router(),
threadRouter = express.Router(),
app = express();
forumRouter.get('/:id)', function(req, res){
res.send('GET forum ' + req.params.id);
});
forumRouter.get('/:id/edit', function(req, res){
res.send('GET forum ' + req.params.id + ' edit page');
});
forumRouter.delete('/:id', function(req, res){
res.send('DELETE forum ' + req.params.id);
});
app.use('/forum', forumRouter);
threadRouter.get('/:id/thread/:tid', function(req, res){
res.send('GET forum ' + req.params.id + ' thread ' + req.params.tid);
});
forumRouter.use('/', threadRouter);
app.listen(app.get("port") || 3000);
Cheers!
I was able to achieve this using a combination of express-namespace for the routes and a fix from the below google group discussion for the static assets. This snippet will treat a request to /foo/javascripts/jquery.js like a request to /javascripts/jquery.js:
app.use('/foo', express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
Source:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/express-js/xlP6_DX6he0/6OTY4hwfV-0J
I know this is a very old question but Express has changed a lot since most these answers were posted so I thought I'd share my approach.
You can, of course, use Routers with Express 4 to group together related functionality behind a particular path. This is well documented and has already been covered by other answers.
However, it is also possible to mount an entire application at a particular path. As an example, let's assume our application (the one we want to host at /myapp) looks like this, in a file called myapp.js:
var express = require('express'),
path = require('path'),
app = express();
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
app.get('/hello', function(req, res) {
res.send('Hello');
});
// Lots of other stuff here
exports.app = app;
In our main js file we could then mount this whole application at the path /myapp:
var express = require('express'),
app = express(),
myApp = require('./myapp').app;
app.use('/myapp', myApp);
app.listen(3000);
Note that we've created two applications here, one mounted on the other. The main application could have further sub-apps mounted at different paths as required.
The code in myapp.js is completely independent of where it was mounted. It's similar to the structure used by the express-generator in that regard.
Some documentation about sub-apps can be found here:
https://expressjs.com/en/4x/api.html#app.mountpath
https://expressjs.com/en/4x/api.html#app.onmount
There are also reliability issues. If reliability is important, a common solution is to use a front-end reverse HTTP proxy such as nginx or HAProxy. They both use single-thread evented architecture and are thus very scalable.
Then you can have different node processes for different subsites, and if one site fails (uncaught exception, memory leak, programmer error, whatever) the rest of sub-sites continue to work.
I was looking for this feature but for API routes, not for static files. What I did was that when I initialized the router, I added the mount path. So my configuration looks like this
//Default configuration
app.configure(function(){
app.use(express.compress());
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
app.set('json spaces',0);
app.use(express.limit('2mb'));
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use('/api', app.router); // <---
app.use(function(err, req, res, callback){
res.json(err.code, {});
});
});
Notice the '/api' when calling the router

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