Routing

Routes enable the outside world to interact with your app via URLs. The most basic ExpressWebJs routes accept a URI and a closure, providing a very simple way of defining routes and behavior.

Routes are registered inside the Routes directory file.

Basic Routing

The most basic route binding requires a URL and a closure:

Route.get('/', () => {
    'Hello World'
});

The return value of the closure will be sent back to the client as a response.

Controller Route

You can also bind a route to a controller using a controller@method signature:

Route.get('users', 'UserController@index');

The above signature UserController@index refers to the App/Http/Controller/UserController.js index method.

Sub Route Folder

To create a route folder to house a particular route group, use the command:

node maker make-route [ROUTE_NAME]

Available Route Methods

The router allows you to register routes that respond to any HTTP verb:

Route.all($uri, $callback);
Route.get($uri, $callback);
Route.post($uri, $callback);
Route.put($uri, $callback);
Route.patch($uri, $callback);
Route.delete($uri, $callback);

Route Groups

Sometimes you may need to register some routes within a group. This allows you to share route attributes, such as middleware, across a large number of routes without needing to define those attributes on each individual route.

Route.group('/prefix', ()=>{
    Route.get($uri, $callback);
});

Route Parameters

You can define dynamic routes using route parameters. For example, you may need to capture a user's ID from the URL. You may do so by defining route parameters:

Route.get('/user/:id','UserController@show');

You may define as many route parameters as required by your route:

Route.get('/posts/:id/likes/:likesId','PostController@show');

Since the hyphen (-) and the dot (.) are interpreted literally, they can be used along with route parameters for useful purposes.

Route.get('/flights/:from-:to','FlightController@show');

Optional parameters

Occasionally you may need to specify a route parameter that may not always be present in the URI. You may do so by placing a ? mark after the parameter name. Make sure to give the route's corresponding variable a default value:

Route.get('/user/:name?','UserController@show');

Regular Expression:

To have more control over the exact string that can be matched by a route parameter, you can append a regular expression in parentheses (()):

Route.get('/user/:userId(\d+)','UserController@show');