Why is Express.js routing not selecting correct route?

Question

So I have the following route:

app.delete('/project/:id', crud.deleteProject);
app.delete('/project/resource/', crud.removeResourceFromProject);

When I run the ajax call with the url http://mysite.no/project/resource/ :

delete: function(url,data) {
return $.ajax({
  url: url,
  type: "DELETE",
  dataType: 'json',
  data: data
});

Express runs the crud.deleteProject function.

If I comment out or move it below the other route, it works as expected.

Why is this?

Answer 1

In Express, the order of your routing definitions is important. It will perform the first matching route. As Blex states, '/:id' is a wildcard value and is matching '/resource' instead of skipping past and following the correct route definition.

A solution is to switch the definitions to have '/project/resource' defined before '/project/:id'

A solution is to add another path layer eg '/project/res/resource' instead of '/project/resource' as Express will not match this to '/:id' .