Wildcard in route parameter regexp

[bevacqua]

Route '/:username([a-z][a-z-]*)'
Route '/:username([a-z][a-z-]*)/:project([a-z][a-z0-9-]*)'

URL /someone/project

Expectation is that the second route should match.
Actual result is the first route matches because the * is considered as all the things rather than "zero or more" [a-z-].

[dougwilson]

It's a limitation of the current version of path-to-regexp we use. A work-around would be to use the following route: /:username([a-z][a-z-]{0,}) (i.e. use {0,} in place of *).

[dougwilson]

I'm going to check if the most recent (non-backwards-compatible) version of path-to-regexp handles this better.

[dougwilson]

It does. So this should be fixed in 5.0, but as for 4.x, you'll probably have to just use the old syntax :/

[bevacqua]

Thanks for the quick feedback.

[dougwilson]

Thanks for the quick feedback.

No problem :) Especially for @bevacqua

[charlierudolph]

So is path-to-regexp not going to be updated until version 5.0? That's something I would really like to see as soon as possible. Also the website is misleading because it points to path-to-regexp and its regexp tester but it is currently very out of date.

[dougwilson]

It's not that we don't want to upgrade path-to-regexp before 5.0, but all versions above where we are at have breaking changes and thus must wait until 5.0. We cannot upgrade path-to-regexp is a 4.x minor release if people's existing 4.x routes break.

As for website issues, please file them at https://github.com/strongloop/expressjs.com

[bevacqua]

For what it's worth, I've been using {0,} without any inconvenients for a long while now.

[charlierudolph]

I want the upgrade to path-to-regexp for named parameters that can include slashes /assets/:asset+. Do you know of a good workaround for that?

[bevacqua]

Don't you need to use /assets/:asset(*) for that use case?