Params in Express

In Express, route parameters are values derived from portions of the URL that start with :. The the req.params property is where Express stores the values of the named sections in the URL.

const app = require('express')();

// `:userId` is a route parameter. Express will capture whatever
// string comes after `/user/` in the URL and store it in
// `req.params.userId`
app.get('/user/:userId', (req, res) => {
  req.params; // { userId: '42' }
  res.json(req.params);
});

const server = await app.listen(3000);
// Demo of making a request to the server
const axios = require('axios');
const res = await axios.get('http://localhost:3000/user/42');

res.data; // { userId: '42' }

Route parameters are also known as URL parameters.

Query String Parameters

Query string params are another commonly used type of parameter in Express. The query string portion of a URL is the part of the URL after the question mark ?.

By default, Express parses the query string and stores the parsed result on the request object as req.query:

const app = require('express')();

app.get('*', (req, res) => {
  req.query; // { a: '1', b: '2' }
  res.json(req.query);
});

const server = await app.listen(3000);
// Demo of making a request to the server
const axios = require('axios');
const res = await axios.get('http://localhost:3000/?a=1&b=2')

res.data; // { a: '1', b: '2' }

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More Express Tutorials

• How to Set Response Headers in Express
• Handle POST Form Data with Express JS
• What Does `app.use(express.json())` Do in Express?
• Handling POST Requests with Express
• What Does `app.use(express.static())` Do in Express?
• The `app.get()` Function in Express
• The `app.use()` Function in Express