What parameters does next() take in Express - javascript

I am currently building an API thanks to Express.js, and I still can not believe how amazing it is. I figured out how to use middlewares, handling requests and responses, how to go to the next middleware ... But there is something that triggers me a lot, which is next().
I know what next() is, I just can't figure out what kind of parameters can next() take, and what they will do. At first I thought it was to pass data to the next middleware, turned out I was wrong, there is req.locals for this.
Can someone enlighten me on this ?

You have three choices for calling next():
1. Continue routing. If you just want to continue routing to the next route handler in the chain that matches this route, then you just call it with no parameters:
next();
This is most often used in middleware:
app.use((req, res, next) => {
// set an item in the session and then continue routing
req.session.xxx = "foo";
next();
});
2. Abort routing with an error to your centralized error handler. If you want to set an error and have routing skip to your generalized error handler, then you can pass an error:
next(new Error("timeout contacting database"));
This will then invoke your general error handling route and pass it that specific error where your general error handling code can decide what to do. This allows you to centralize your error handling response code in one place. Examples of using next(err) are here.
You can see the doc for generalized error handling in Express for examples on how that works.
3. Skip route handlers in this router, continue routing in other routers. If you want to skip all route handlers in the current router, but continue with any other routes that might be registered, then you can do this:
next('route');
From the doc:
You can provide multiple callback functions that behave just like middleware, except that these callbacks can invoke next('route') to bypass the remaining route callback(s). You can use this mechanism to impose pre-conditions on a route, then pass control to subsequent routes if there is no reason to proceed with the current route.
If you repeatedly search for "next(" on this page of the doc, you will find lots of examples. There's an example of this usage here in the doc.
FYI, Express 5 may add some new uses for next() because it may return a promise that lets you know when routing is now completely done.

Related

In general should routes be placed before or after middleware?

Oddly, when I moved my middleware in front of my routes, my routes stopped working. I got no error, on the client or the server.
My fetch() calls seemingly disappeared.
However when I put the routes before my middleware, the routes begin to work again.
I'm refactoring code and have no idea why this is happening.
// load middleware
const middleware = require(__dirname +'/middleware');
app.use(middleware.session.session);
...
// load routes
const routes = require(__dirname + '/routes');
app.use('/articles', routes.articles);
...
Routes and middleware should be placed in the order that you want them to be matched against the route and then to execute (if they match the incoming route). There is no absolute answer to which comes first as it really depends upon what you're trying to do. For example, you would put app.use(express.json()) before any route that wants to use a JSON formatted body. But, you would put the login page route handler BEFORE any middleware that checks to see if the user is authenticated (so that it can run for users that aren't yet authenticated).
If your code stops working when you put the middleware first, then there is probably something wrong with the implementation of the middleware. We can only help with that specific issue if you show us the actual code for that middleware. Perhaps you aren't calling next() to continue routing or you're sending a response in the middleware or there's a coding error in the middleware.

Proper usage of Express' res.render() and res.redirect()

I am using a res.redirect('page.ejs'); and on my browser I get the message:
Cannot GET /page.ejs
I have not declared this in my routes file in the style of :
app.get('/page', function(req, res) {
res.render('page.ejs');
});
Should this be included in order for the res.redirect() to work?
When I do not use res.redirect() but res.render(), even if I have not the app.get() code, it still works.
so to understand this, let's look at what each of these methods do.
res.redirect('page.ejs');
// or, more correctly, you're redirecting to an *endpoint*
// (not a page. the endpoint will render a *page*) so it should be:
res.redirect('/page');
this will tell express to redirect your request to the GET /page.ejs endpoint. An endpoint is the express method you described above:
app.get('/page', function(req, res) {
res.render('page.ejs');
});
since you don't have that endpoint defined it will not work. If you do have it defined, it will execute the function, and the res.render('page.ejs') line will run, which will return the page.ejs file. You could return whatever you want though, it can be someOtherPage.ejs or you can even return json res.json({ message: 'hi' });
res.render('page.ejs');
this will just respond to the client (the front-end / js / whatever you want to call it) with the page.ejs template, it doesn't need to know whether the other endpoint is present or not, it's returning the page.ejs template itself.
so then, it's really up to you what you want to use depending on the scenario. Sometimes, one endpoint can't handle the request so it defers the request to another endpoint, which theoretically, knows how to handle the request. In that case redirect is used.
hope that makes sense and clarifies your confusion
(I'm not an expert on the inner-workings of express, but this is a high-level idea of what it's doing)
You should do res.redirect('/page')

How to bypass an express middleware?

I'm working with an express application. There are some express routes, as
server.get('*' , ... )
etc. which perform some common operations: authentication, validation... etc.
they also decorates the response with meaningful information: i.e. in every request to the server it gives not only the expected json/html, but also information regarding the user, some app metadata that the front-end consumes etc. etc.
Let's say all this extra metadata cames in a field called extradata in every request to the server.
Now, there is a bug that is causing a problem: instead of returning its expected response (a json with a bunch of system logs), is sending only this extradata field.
I'm pretty confident the problem is in one of the middlewares, because that code that sends the response in this case is really simple, it's just a res.send() of a json. So I believe this part of the app is requiring some module that sets a middleware which causes the error. There are a lot of global vars and implicit parameters in the app so is really difficult to debug it manualluy.
I attempted to bypass such middlewares programmatically, like:
delete server._router.stack[2];
but is causing an TypeError: Cannot read property 'route' of undefined and thus preventing my app to build: sure this is not the way to go.
so, is there a way to programmatically ignore or bypass express routes that are yet set?
Even better, is there a way to programmatically tap into express middlewares and log every request and response?
(afaik, there are libreries like morgan that logs every request, but I don't think they apply to this case since I need to discriminate between middlewares).
What I generally do is simply use the next method. You can access it by simply passing it to the callback function. Something like:
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
if(...) {
next();
} else {
...
}
}
What this is going to do is go to the next middleware.
So if I understand correctly, you can check what you exactly need in the if-statement and do things accordingly.
What I would suggest is you read the Express API documentation, especially the section about middleware, which you can find here. Moreover, try to isolate the suspects and solve the issue by removing the problem, rather than deleting handlers and trying to solve the problem the easy way.

app.use ("*") seems to be calling function multiple times

app.use("*", topUsers) is called multiple times..
topUsers is being called multiple times
function topUsers(req, res, next){
console.log("req.url", req.url)
findMostUsefullReviewsAggregate(6)
.then(function(aggregationResult){
// console.log("aggregationResult", aggregationResult)
// console.log("***aggregationResult::", aggregationResult)
return populateMostUseful(aggregationResult)
})
.then(function(populated){
console.log("<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<TOPUSER CALLED >>>>>>>>>>>>")
// console.log("POPULATED: ", populated);
console.log(">>>populateMostUseful.length");
populated = populated.map(function(e){
e.momented = moment(e.createdAt.getTime()).fromNow();
return e;
})
req.session.mostUsefulReviews = populated;
// res.end()
})
.catch(function(err){
console.log("HEADERERR", err);
});
next();
}
( some info for later: main.ejs is for ("/"))
when I change it to app.get("/", topUsers) and go to "/"it is only called once (which is what I want).
the console.log for req.url shows "/" for all 3
In my main.ejs I include a header.ejs. I thought that might be a problem. Maybe the request to the header for the include was a problem but I don't think so.
Quick question : If I do app.get("/") would that work on all subroutes like /users/idofuser? I think If I do that the function doesn't get called.
I think app.get("*") also gives me the same problem with the multiple calls.
Edit: when I put next in the .then() it still gets called multiple times.
my real goal it to have something happen on all routes. I already have routes set up. I don't want to go to each route and do something like app.get("/", onemiddleware, topUsers, ). I don't want to put topUSers on each one physically. Do I have to.
If you are doing this from a browser loading a web page, the browser is probably requesting multiple resources from the website.
For starters, it often requests the favicon and if there are any other resources in the web page (other scripts, stylesheets, images, etc...) each of those will be a separate request to your web page. You can see exactly what URL is being requested by logging req.url for each request. From a single page load, there should be no reason you would get three requests for /, but you very well could get a request for / follow by other requests for some other resource (and consequently some other URL) from the same server.
Show us the web page you are loading and we can better point out what's going on.
If what you're really trying to do is to share a middleware on a set of routes, then you can create a router, put the middleware on the router with router.use(), define all the routes that you want to have that middleware on that specific router and then hook the router into your app. This will execute the middleware only for routes that match that router and you only have to specify the middleware once for the router and all routes defined on that router will use that middleware. Other routes defined directly on the app object or on other routers will not use the middleware. You will have to define the router as some unique path root or wildcard that helps express know which routes should be passed into your router. We'd have to see the whole universe of paths you plan to use that both do and don't use that middleware for us to know more specifically what to suggest.

Order of the error-handling and 404-handling middlewares?

The express.js website confused me, because there are two contradictory statements:
You define error-handling middleware last, after other app.use() and routes calls
– /guide/error-handling.html
and
All you need to do is add a middleware function at the very bottom of the stack (below all other functions) to handle a 404 response
– /starter/faq.html
It seems to be telling me that both of these middleware layers should be the last ones in the stack...? Erm, so what, I am meant to add two app.use middleware layers last? That is not possible...
Anyway, obviously one of these pages forgot to mention the exception of the other, so I'd like to know: which middleware should I register last? My error-handler or my 404-handler?
I'd like these two functions, but I'm not sure which order they need to go in for express to work properly:
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
res.status(404).send('Sorry cant find that!');
});
app.use(function(err, req, res, next) {
console.error(err.stack);
res.status(500).send('Something broke!');
});
Also I'm wondering, do I need to call next from within either handler?
The order doesn't really matter as your last middleware only gets called, when in some middleware before next(err) has been called. Your 404 middleware will always get called if nothing else has handled (and finished) the request.
And for your second question: no, you don't want to call next()in either of those as you finish the request with res.send().
Edit: I would leave the order like that though as the 404 middleware is not really an error handler.

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