How to get Nice-Looking URLS - Node.JS

Question

How to get Nice-Looking URLS - Node.JS

I have been looking around the web for a way to get the URL that is like:

example.com/games/game1 instead of example.com/games?id=game1

I have looked around the Node.JS website but I couldn't find anything that seemed to apply to my situation.
Any help is very appreciated. I have found an answer that did this using a .HTACCESS file, but I couldn't find a node.js alternative. The question/answer that I found was, creating nice looking URLs

Any help is very appreciated.

javascript
node.js
url

Answer 1

This URL example.com/games?id=game1 is passing the id as a GET parameter. To replace it with example.com/games/game1, you just have to come with a strategy on how to pass this id. This strategy is usually referred to node.js as routes, and, they are plenty of options on how to achieve your goal:

If you are using Express framework, you have built in ability to do stuff like this (based off TJ Holowaychuk's route separation examples):

app.get('/games/:id', games.view);

Then, in your game.js file:

exports.view = function(req, res){
  console.log(req.params.id); //gives you game1
  //...
};

- Another way to do it is to use something specific for routing (instead of a whole framework). Director comes to mind.

var viewGame = function(gameId) { console.log(gameId); };

var routes = {
  '/games/:gameId': viewGame
};

Answer 2

You can list to all requests, then parse request.url to decide which page to render or whether to return a 404 / 302 or whatever you want to do. This is just a small example. You probably want to separate your routing from your logic:

var http = require("http");

http.createServer(function(request, response) {
    var parts = request.url.split('/');
    if(parts[0] === 'games'){
        var id = parts[1];
        // Check if valid id
        // And render the correct page
    }
}).listen(80);