Dealing with slash characters in request parameter using Express route

Question

I'm currently working on a URL shortener app using Express. I want the user to be able to enter a URL like this:

https://www.exampleurlshortener.com/new/https://www.google.com

The problem is whenever I try to specify the parameter using Express it will only extract the 'https:' section and everything after that is lost because the 2 backslashes are registering as a new route:

app.get('/new/:url', (req, res) => {
  console.log(req.params.url) // outputs 'https:'

I thought about specifying each section as a new parameter but if inner is blank this ends up throwing a 404. I would need to check if inner is blank using this method otherwise the user would be able to type https:/something/www.google.com

app.get('/new/:prot/:inner/:address', (req, res) => {
  // throws 404 on valid addresses

Is there a simple way to solve this that I'm missing? Is the full URL available to be checked somewhere in the request? Or can parameters ignore backslashes?

Answer 1

You can use an expression to for your URL placeholders:

app.get('/new/:url(.*)', (req, res) => {
  console.log(req.params.url) // will output 'https://www.google.com'