get url after “#” in express.js middleware request

Question

I need to get url on server middleware (using express.js). I use req.url but when url starts from /#some/url req.url returns / ...

The same with req.path ..

Is there a way to get url after # in express.js?

Answer 1

No. The part of the URL starting with the # symbol is never sent to the server.

The # symbol in an URL is to introduce the fragment identifier . This is used to link to a specific part of the page. If a browser loads /#some/url , it will effectively load / , and skip to the HTML element with id="some/url" (if present). The fragment identifier is only relevant to the browser, so it is not sent with the HTTP request.

What you however can do , is using client side Javascript to read out the value of window.location.hash and send it to the server using an XMLHttpRequest. ( See other Stack Overflow post. )

Answer 2

Any path/query param after # (Hash symbol) in URL will be removed by the browser.

This can be handled by a small hack by replacing the hash with an EMPTY string in the script tag of HTML/EJS file which will remove the hash and the entire URL will be passed to the server.

In case of a server side rendered application, applying the above technique in the 404 will route the redirection back to the valid router.

<script>
  const hash = window.location.hash;
  if(hash.length > 0 && hash.includes("#/")) {
    window.location.replace(window.location.href.replace('#/',''));
  }
</script>

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This worked well in my application. Thanks to my teammates for this fix.

Answer 3

Use the built-in url module which is available in Node.js to parse the URL and create aurlObject . This will have a hash fragment property containing the hash fragment you want.

const url = require('url')
const urlObj = url.parse(req.url)
console.log(urlObj.hash) // #some/url