How do I redirect in expressjs while passing some context?

Question

I am using express to make a web app in node.js. This is a simplification of what I have:

var express = require('express');
var jade = require('jade');
var http = require("http");


var app = express();
var server = http.createServer(app);

app.get('/', function(req, res) {
    // Prepare the context
    res.render('home.jade', context);
});

app.post('/category', function(req, res) {
    // Process the data received in req.body
    res.redirect('/');
});

My problem is the following:

If I find that the data sent in /category doesn't validate, I would like pass some additional context to the / page. How could I do this? Redirect doesn't seem to allow any kind of extra parameter.

Check out express' flash: stackoverflow.com/questions/12442716/… — tymeJV
Terminology matters here: there is no / page. There is a / route, which express can service, and there is a homepage template, which express can render. If you want to preserve some data for rendering the homepage template after a redirect, the accepted answer notwithstanding, sessions are your friend. They give you a data store that persists across requests and responses for individual browsing users so you can put data in during /category handling, and then take it out if it's there during / handing. — Mike 'Pomax' Kamermans

AlbertEngelB AlbertEngelB · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-26T20:26:54

There are a few ways of passing data around to different routes. The most correct answer is, of course, query strings. You'll need to ensure that the values are properly encodeURIComponent and decodeURIComponent.

app.get('/category', function(req, res) {
  var string = encodeURIComponent('something that would break');
  res.redirect('/?valid=' + string);
});

You can snag that in your other route by getting the parameters sent by using req.query.

app.get('/', function(req, res) {
  var passedVariable = req.query.valid;
  // Do something with variable
});

For more dynamic way you can use the url core module to generate the query string for you:

const url = require('url');    
app.get('/category', function(req, res) {
    res.redirect(url.format({
       pathname:"/",
       query: {
          "a": 1,
          "b": 2,
          "valid":"your string here"
        }
     }));
 });

So if you want to redirect all req query string variables you can simply do

res.redirect(url.format({
       pathname:"/",
       query:req.query,
     });
 });

And if you are using Node >= 7.x you can also use the querystring core module

const querystring = require('querystring');    
app.get('/category', function(req, res) {
      const query = querystring.stringify({
          "a": 1,
          "b": 2,
          "valid":"your string here"
      });
      res.redirect('/?' + query);
 });

Another way of doing it is by setting something up in the session. You can read how to set it up here, but to set and access variables is something like this:

app.get('/category', function(req, res) {
  req.session.valid = true;
  res.redirect('/');
});

And later on after the redirect...

app.get('/', function(req, res) {
  var passedVariable = req.session.valid;
  req.session.valid = null; // resets session variable
  // Do something
});

There is also the option of using an old feature of Express, req.flash. Doing so in newer versions of Express will require you to use another library. Essentially it allows you to set up variables that will show up and reset the next time you go to a page. It's handy for showing errors to users, but again it's been removed by default. EDIT: Found a library that adds this functionality.

Hopefully that will give you a general idea how to pass information around in an Express application.

How do I redirect in expressjs while passing some context?

9 Answers