Mixing Wildcards and Parameters in Express - express

Question

I have web content generated by Minecraft Overviewer in:
/home/mc/backups/servername/latest/overviewer
I have a very simple server with express/nodejs. Here is my app.js:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
//----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
// Each server's root points to the latest overviewer page |
//----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
app.get('/minecraft/:server/*', function(req, res) {
console.log('HELLO?');
res.send('Finally some luck!');
/*
var
server = req.params.server,
file = req.params[0] ? req.params[0] : 'index.html',
dir = '../backups/' + server + '/latest/overviewer';
res.sendFile(file, { root: dir });
*/
});
app.use(express.static('www'));
app.listen(80, function () {
console.log('Web server listening on port 80');
});
I included a little more code than what is running so you can see my intent in case this is an xy kind of problem. I'm wanting to route static files, but I don't think I can use express.static because I want the URL to be mapped a little differently than my file structure (and based on a server name).
So what's the problem with my simple server? When I try and navigate to mysite.com/minecraft/isopre I see a white page saying Cannot GET /minecraft/isopre. If I remove the * from the end of the string I'm routing on line 7 I see Finally some luck!. But I want the star there so I can map mysite.com/minecraft/isopre to index.html or mysite.com/minecraft/isopre/overviewer.js.
So what's the right way to go about doing this?

Answer 1

In order to perform desirable operation i suggest you to use ? symbol for regular expression:
app.get('/minecraft/:server/:file?', function(req, res, next) {
if('undefined' != typeof req.params.file && req.params.file) {
var file = req.params.file;
}
if('undefined' != typeof req.params.server && req.params.server) {
var server = req.params.server;
}
});
In this case :file become optional and node.js won't fail your entire application if wildcard is absent.
Hereby, if req.params.file variable is undefined you could serve index.html file.