Node.js: Difference between req.query[] and req.params

Question

Given this route

app.get('/hi/:param1', function(req,res){} );

and given this URL http://www.google.com/hi/there?qs1=you&qs2=tube

You will have:

req.query

{
  qs1: 'you',
  qs2: 'tube'
}

req.params

{
  param1: 'there'
}

Express req.params >>

req.params contains route parameters (in the path portion of the URL), and req.query contains the URL query parameters (after the ? in the URL).

You can also use req.param(name) to look up a parameter in both places (as well as req.body), but this method is now deprecated.

Suppose you have defined your route name like this:

https://localhost:3000/user/:userId

which will become:

https://localhost:3000/user/5896544

Here, if you will print: request.params

{
userId : 5896544
}

so

request.params.userId = 5896544

so request.params is an object containing properties to the named route

and request.query comes from query parameters in the URL eg:

https://localhost:3000/user?userId=5896544 

request.query

{

userId: 5896544

}

so

request.query.userId = 5896544

You should be able to access the query using dot notation now.

If you want to access say you are receiving a GET request at /checkEmail?type=email&utm_source=xxxx&email=xxxxx&utm_campaign=XX and you want to fetch out the query used.

var type = req.query.type,
    email = req.query.email,
    utm = {
     source: req.query.utm_source,
     campaign: req.query.utm_campaign
    };

Params are used for the self defined parameter for receiving request, something like (example):

router.get('/:userID/food/edit/:foodID', function(req, res){
 //sample GET request at '/xavg234/food/edit/jb3552'

 var userToFind = req.params.userID;//gets xavg234
 var foodToSearch = req.params.foodID;//gets jb3552
 User.findOne({'userid':userToFind}) //dummy code
     .then(function(user){...})
     .catch(function(err){console.log(err)});
});

I want to mention one important note regarding req.query , because currently I am working on pagination functionality based on req.query and I have one interesting example to demonstrate to you...

Example:

// Fetching patients from the database
exports.getPatients = (req, res, next) => {

const pageSize = +req.query.pageSize;
const currentPage = +req.query.currentPage;

const patientQuery = Patient.find();
let fetchedPatients;

// If pageSize and currentPage are not undefined (if they are both set and contain valid values)
if(pageSize && currentPage) {
    /**
     * Construct two different queries 
     * - Fetch all patients 
     * - Adjusted one to only fetch a selected slice of patients for a given page
     */
    patientQuery
        /**
         * This means I will not retrieve all patients I find, but I will skip the first "n" patients
         * For example, if I am on page 2, then I want to skip all patients that were displayed on page 1,
         * 
         * Another example: if I am displaying 7 patients per page , I want to skip 7 items because I am on page 2,
         * so I want to skip (7 * (2 - 1)) => 7 items
         */
        .skip(pageSize * (currentPage - 1))

        /**
         * Narrow dont the amound documents I retreive for the current page
         * Limits the amount of returned documents
         * 
         * For example: If I got 7 items per page, then I want to limit the query to only
         * return 7 items. 
         */
        .limit(pageSize);
}
patientQuery.then(documents => {
    res.status(200).json({
        message: 'Patients fetched successfully',
        patients: documents
    });
  });
};

You will noticed + sign in front of req.query.pageSize and req.query.currentPage

Why? If you delete + in this case, you will get an error, and that error will be thrown because we will use invalid type (with error message 'limit' field must be numeric).

Important: By default if you extracting something from these query parameters, it will always be a string, because it's coming the URL and it's treated as a text.

If we need to work with numbers, and convert query statements from text to number, we can simply add a plus sign in front of statement.