Using routes in Express-js

Andreas Stokholm picture Andreas Stokholm · Jan 14, 2012 · Viewed 100.8k times · Source

So I'm starting to use Node.js. I saw the video with Ryan Dahl on Nodejs.org and heard he recommended Express-js for websites.

I downloaded the latest version of Express, and began to code. I have a fully fledged static view up on /, but as soon as I try sending parameters, I get errors like this:

Cannot GET /wiki

I tried following the guide on expressjs.com but the way one uses routes has changed in the latest version, which makes the guide unusable.

Guide:

app.get('/users/:id?', function(req, res, next){
    var id = req.params.id;
    if (id) {
        // do something
    } else {
        next();
    }
});

Generated by Express:

app.get('/', routes.index);

My problem arises when I try and add another route.

app.get('/wiki', routes.wiki_show);

I've tried a bunch of approaches, but I keep getting the Cannot GET /wiki (404) error.

routes/index.js looks like this:

exports.index = function(req, res) {
    res.render('index', { title: 'Test', articles: articles, current_article: current_article, sections: sections })
};

The only thing I did there was add some parameters (arrays in the same file) and this i working. But when I copy the contents and change exports.index to exports.wiki or exports.wiki_show I still get the Cannot GET /wiki error.

Can anyone explain to me what I'm missing here? - Thanks.

Answer

Andreas Stokholm picture Andreas Stokholm · Jan 15, 2012

So, after I created my question, I got this related list on the right with a similar issue: Organize routes in Node.js.

The answer in that post linked to the Express repo on GitHub and suggests to look at the 'route-separation' example.

This helped me change my code, and I now have it working. - Thanks for your comments.

My implementation ended up looking like this;

I require my routes in the app.js:

var express = require('express')
  , site = require('./site')
  , wiki = require('./wiki');

And I add my routes like this:

app.get('/', site.index);
app.get('/wiki/:id', wiki.show);
app.get('/wiki/:id/edit', wiki.edit);

I have two files called wiki.js and site.js in the root of my app, containing this:

exports.edit = function(req, res) {

    var wiki_entry = req.params.id;

    res.render('wiki/edit', {
        title: 'Editing Wiki',
        wiki: wiki_entry
    })
}