With Node.js, how can I redirect random string paths to the home page?

Question

I've set up a typical node.js server (vanilla, no express, etc) and its works great. But for my web app, I want to be able to use not a query string, but a simple path to express the user's session ID.

For example domain.com/GH34DG2 would be served the same as domain.com. I decided to attempt this because I've seen other apps use this format, and it's shorter and nicer looking than a query string. Once the user has been served the page, the client will decipher the path and use it to connect to a specific session.

How can I do this with a basic Node.js server?

When the user types or pastes domain.com/GH34DG2 into their web browser, I need my server to serve the index page, not try to read the file domain.com/GH34DG2 , but it still needs to read other paths, like style sheets, videos, etc as usual.

Answer 1

The answer was actual embarrassingly simple I realized. All I need to do if check whether the path was missing an extension and then serve /index.html (or home.html or whichever one you use), here's my "Check Home Request":

function checkHomeReq(path, ext) {
    if (path === "/" || ext == '' )
        path = "/index.html";
    return path;
}

Answer 2

Just parse the request url.

Here's a simple server example I just found on google, I added some stuff to handleRequest :

var http = require('http');

const PORT=8080; 

function handleRequest(request, response){

    // parse request.url to pull out the session_id
    var session_id = request.url.split('/')[1];

    // do something with session_id
    // serve page/data/whatever

    response.end('It Works!! Path Hit: ' + request.url);
}

var server = http.createServer(handleRequest);
server.listen(PORT, function(){
    console.log("Server listening on: http://localhost:%s", PORT);
});

Answer 3

Maybe you can use something called md5?

in php we have

md5(uniqid(rand()));

in node.js they have a module for MD5