The 404 Handler

Part of the Express Basics section of Coddy's Node.js journey. Lesson 14 of 20.

Express answers an unknown path with its own page, Cannot GET /x, which fits neither your site nor your API.

app.use((req, res) => {
    res.status(404).send('No forecast here. Try /weather/oslo');
});

A middleware with no path runs for every request that reaches it. Put this one after every route and after express.static: requests they answered never get there, so it only sees the ones nothing answered. It answers, so it needs no next.

req.path is the path without the query string, so req.path.startsWith('/api/') tells an API call from a page.

Challenge

Easy

A path under /api/ that nothing answers gets 404 with { "error": "Not found" }.
Any other gets a 404 HTML page saying Page not found.

Send GET /api/nope, open /nope in the page view, then send GET /api/recipes/1.

Try it yourself

import express from 'express';
import { randomUUID } from 'node:crypto';
import { recipes } from './data.js';

const app = express();

app.use((req, res, next) => {
    console.log(`${req.method} ${req.url}`);
    next();
});

app.use((req, res, next) => {
    res.set('X-Request-Id', randomUUID());
    next();
});

app.use(express.json());

app.use(express.static('public'));

const escapeHtml = (text) =>
    text
        .replaceAll('&', '&amp;')
        .replaceAll('<', '&lt;')
        .replaceAll('>', '&gt;')
        .replaceAll('"', '&quot;');

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    const items = recipes.map((r) => `<li><a href="/recipes/${r.id}">${escapeHtml(r.title)}</a></li>`);
    res.send(`<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css"><h1>Recipe Box</h1><ul>${items.join('')}</ul>`);
});

// type('text') sends plain text, so each title shows on its own line.
app.get('/recipes', (req, res) => {
    const { tag } = req.query;
    const list = tag ? recipes.filter((recipe) => recipe.tags.includes(tag)) : recipes;
    res.type('text').send(list.map((recipe) => recipe.title).join('\n'));
});

app.get('/recipes/:id', (req, res) => {
    const recipe = recipes.find((r) => r.id === Number(req.params.id));
    if (!recipe) {
        res.status(404).send('No such recipe');
        return;
    }
    res.send(recipe.title);
});

app.get('/api/recipes', (req, res) => {
    res.json(recipes);
});

app.get('/api/recipes/:id', (req, res) => {
    const recipe = recipes.find((r) => r.id === Number(req.params.id));
    if (!recipe) {
        res.status(404).json({ error: 'No such recipe' });
        return;
    }
    res.json(recipe);
});

app.post('/api/recipes', (req, res) => {
    const { title, tags } = req.body;
    if (!title) {
        res.status(400).json({ error: 'A recipe needs a title' });
        return;
    }
    const recipe = { id: recipes.length + 1, title, tags: tags ?? [] };
    recipes.push(recipe);
    res.status(201).json(recipe);
});

app.get('/about', (req, res) => {
    res.send('Recipe Box collects family recipes.');
});

app.get('/menu', (req, res) => {
    res.redirect(301, '/recipes');
});

app.get('/menu/:id', (req, res) => {
    res.redirect(301, `/recipes/${req.params.id}`);
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('Recipe Box is running on port 3000');
});