How do I redirect all unmatched urls with Express?

Question

How do I redirect all unmatched urls with Express?

I want to redirect all unmatched urls to my homepage. Ie. someone goes to www.mysite.com/blah/blah/blah/foo/bar or www.mysite.com/invalid_url - I want to redirect them to www.mysite.com

Obviously I don't want to interfere with my valid urls.

So is there some wildcard matcher that I can use to redirect requests to these invalid urls?

node.js
express

Answer 1

You can insert a 'catch all' middleware as last middleware/route in your Express chain:

//configure the order of operations for request handlers:
app.configure(function(){
  app.use(express.logger('dev'));
  app.use(express.bodyParser());
  app.use(express.cookieParser());
  app.use(express.static(__dirname+'/assets'));  // try to serve static files
  app.use(app.router);                           // try to match req with a route
  app.use(redirectUnmatched);                    // redirect if nothing else sent a response
});

function redirectUnmatched(req, res) {
  res.redirect("http://www.mysite.com/");
}

...

// your routes
app.get('/', function(req, res) { ... });
...

// start listening
app.listen(3000);

I use such a setup to generate a custom 404 Not Found page.

Answer 2

Add a route at the end of the rest of your routes.

app.all('*', function(req, res) {
  res.redirect("http://www.mysite.com/");
});