Remove route mappings in NodeJS Express

Question

I have a route mapped as:

app.get('/health/*', function(req, res){
    res.send('1');
});

How can I remove / remap this route to an empty handler at runtime?

Answer 1

This removes app.use middlewares and/or app.VERB (get/post) routes. Tested on [email protected]

var routes = app._router.stack;
routes.forEach(removeMiddlewares);
function removeMiddlewares(route, i, routes) {
    switch (route.handle.name) {
        case 'yourMiddlewareFunctionName':
        case 'yourRouteFunctionName':
            routes.splice(i, 1);
    }
    if (route.route)
        route.route.stack.forEach(removeMiddlewares);
}

Note that it requires that the middleware/route functions have names:

app.use(function yourMiddlewareFunctionName(req, res, next) {
    ...          ^ named function
});

It won't work if the function is anonymous:

app.get('/path', function(req, res, next) {
    ...          ^ anonymous function, won't work                    
});

Answer 2

Express (at least as of 3.0.5) keeps all of its routes in app.routes. From the documentation:

The app.routes object houses all of the routes defined mapped by the associated HTTP verb. This object may be used for introspection capabilities, for example Express uses this internally not only for routing but to provide default OPTIONS behaviour unless app.options() is used. Your application or framework may also remove routes by simply by removing them from this object.

Your app.routes should look similar to this:

{ get: 
   [ { path: '/health/*',
       method: 'get',
       callbacks: [Object],
       keys: []}]
}

So, you should be able to loop through app.routes.get until you find what you are looking for, and then delete it.