CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptnode.jsexpressbackendrouter
Asad Ullah Khalid
Asad Ullah Khalid

Reputation: 170

How to use exact match in ExpressJs router

I have two routes as follow in my ExpressJs application

router.get("/task/", Controller.retrieveAll);
router.get("/task/seed/", Controller.seed);

If I make a request on /task/seed/ instead of Controller.seed, Controller.retrieveAll is getting called.

So basically router matches the /task/ string before it checks the proceeding string, in my case /seed.

How can I make sure that the router does check the full string (kind of exact match)?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 7713

Answers (2)

jfriend00
jfriend00

Reputation: 707426

The example you show using router.get() or app.get() does not actually occur. router.get() does not do partial matches unless you're using wildcards or regexes.

I verified that in this simple test app:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.get("/task/", (req, res) => {
    res.send("got /task");
});

app.get("/task/seed", (req, res) => {
    res.send("got /task/seed");
});

app.listen(80);

When you request /task/seed, you get the message got /task/seed so, it does route correctly.

On the other hand, router.use() does do partial matches so this problem could occur if your actual code was using .use(), not .get(). In that case, you just need to either switch to the verb-specific .get() instead of using the generic .use() or you need to order your routes from the most specific to the least-specific so that the most-specific declaration gets a chance to match first:

router.use("/task/seed/", Controller.seed);
router.use("/task/", Controller.retrieveAll);

In case you're curious, the two main differences between router.use() and router.get() are:

  1. .get() only matches GET requests while .use() matches all HTTP verbs.
  2. .get() only does full path matches while .use() will match any URL path that starts with what you specify.

Upvotes: 5

Karan
Karan

Reputation: 817

Execution of express router middleware functions is sequential. There is no keyword like exact, as we have in react-router to make the router check for exact path match.

To make your code work, and always when creating express routes, have the path with the higher specificity above the path with lesser specificity.

So, this should work:

router.get("/task/seed/", Controller.seed);
router.get("/task/", Controller.retrieveAll);

These earlier StackOverflow answers will be very helpful:

  1. https://stackoverflow.com/a/32604002/6772055
  2. https://stackoverflow.com/a/27317835/6772055

Upvotes: 4

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