Basic route is like this:
app.get('/', function(req, res){
res.send('hello world');
});
Is it possible to name that route and have it available in any template so it can be used like this:
app.get('/', name="index", function(req, res){
res.send('hello world');
});
Go to site <a href="{% url index %}">index page</a>.
Inspiration comes from Django :)
There is no out of the box mechanism for that. However you can mimic Django's style like that: define urls.js file which will hold an array of URLs. First start with:
myviews.js
exports.Index = function( req, res, next ) {
res.send( "hello world!" );
};
urls.js
var MyViews = require( "mywviews.js" );
module.exports = [
{ name : "index", pattern : "/", view : MyViews.Index }
]
Now in app.js ( or whatever the main file is ) you need to bind urls to Express. For example like this:
app.js
var urls = require( "urls.js" );
for ( var i = 0, l = urls.length; i < l; i++ ) {
var url = urls[ i ];
app.all( url.pattern, url.view );
};
Now you can define custom helper ( Express 3.0 style ):
var urls = require( "urls.js" ), l = urls.length;
app.locals.url = function( name ) {
for ( var i = 0; i < l; i++ ) {
var url = urls[ i ];
if ( url.name === name ) {
return url.pattern;
}
};
};
and you can easily use it in your template. Now the problem is that it does not give you fancy URL creation mechanism like in Django ( where you can pass additional parameters to url ). On the other hand you can modify url function and extend it. I don't want to go into all details here, but here's an example how to use regular expressions ( you should be able to combine these to ideas together ):
Express JS reverse URL route (Django style)
Note that I posted the question, so I had the same problem some time ago. :D
I found express-reverse to nicely solve this issue
https://github.com/dizlexik/express-reverse
It augments the standard routing allowing you to pass the route's name as first argument
app.get('test', '/hello/:x', function(req, res, next) {
res.end('hello ' + req.params.x);
});
Let you build the url from inside a template by name
<a href="<%= url('test', { x: 'world' }) %>">Test</a>
Let you redirect to an url by name
app.get('/test-redirect', function(req, res, next) {
res.redirectToRoute('test', { x: 'world' });
});
I had the same problem and decided to make a library to help me out.
Besides not hardcoding your routes, it allows me to build navigation components like breadcrumbs and I can use it server side with express or client side with Backbone or whatever.