Multiple optional route parameters in Express?

Question

I am using Express to handle a route which is in the format of /articles/:year/:month/:day, where year, month and day are optional.

• If none of the three params is given, all articles will be returned;
• If year is given, articles of that year will be returned;
• If year and month are given, articles of that year and month will be returned;
• If all three params are given, articles of that year, month and day will be returned.

My question is, how do I make them optional? With the current route I've defined, unless all three parameters are present, it will not be able to be resolved and will fall into the default route.

Solution 1

The expressjs's guide to routing mentions:

Express uses path-to-regexp for matching the route paths; see the path-to-regexp documentation for all the possibilities in defining route paths. Express Route Tester is a handy tool for testing basic Express routes, although it does not support pattern matching.

Basically, you can use the ? character to make the parameter optional.

/articles/:year?/:month?/:day?

Solution 2

Edited for own purpose of having the 3 different options in one answer. Credit to @hjpotter92 for his regex answer.

With URL Params

With regex

app.get('/articles/:year?/:month?/:day?', function(req, res) {
  var year = req.params.year; //either a value or undefined
  var month = req.params.month;
  var day = req.params.day;
}

Without regex

var getArticles = function(year, month, day) { ... }

app.get('/articles/:year', function(req, res) {
  getArticles(req.params.year);
}
app.get('/articles/:year/:month', function(req, res) {
  getArticles(req.params.year, req.params.month);
}
app.get('/articles/:year/:month/:day', function(req, res) {
  getArticles(req.params.year, req.params.month, req.params.day);
}

Define the 3 paths you want to support and reuse the same function

With Query Params

app.get('/articles', function(req, res) {
  var year = req.query.year; //either a value or undefined
  var month = req.query.month;
  var day = req.query.day;
}

The url for this endpoint will look like this:

http://localhost/articles?year=2016&month=1&day=19

Comments

[CLDev]

Thanks a lot for your help. I think they tackle my use case perfectly (especially the multi-route proposal), just that hjpotter92 has suggested an even simpler solution. Thanks again for your help anyways!

[The Fool]

Since when can't you have an underscore in your variables?

[tbhaxor]

Also Open API Standards recommends using query parameter for optional parameters.

[Andres Espinosa]

It seems that it doesn't work. If you try that route with the route tester, /articles//1/2 for example with not match. If I use only one optional parameter it works

[hjpotter92]

@AndresEspinosa did you go through path-to-regexp? You can use * for any nested paths

[Andres Espinosa]

Yes, I did. I think * is a bad practice because it would match many unexpected paths. Anyway, what you're saying is to use something like /articles/* right? I would have to then parse the rest of the path by myself then?

[hjpotter92]

@AndresEspinosa it depends on how deep the paths you're expecting.