Add express style parameter regular expression handling

[stevehipwell]

Feature Request

Adding Express style parameter regular expression handling, such as /test/:id([a-f\d]{24}) and /test/:num(\d+), to Restify would make working with paramaters in Restify a much nicer experience. In addition it would enable Restify to handle the shared middleware scenarios that it cannot currently support due to parameters being unnamed and an array when regular expressions are used.

Use Case

A nested scenario.

const idMiddleware = (req, res, next) => {
  const obj = service.getObjById(req.params.id);
});

const numMiddleware = (req, res, next) => {
  const obj = service.getObjByNum(req.params.num);
});

server.get("/test:id([a-f\d]{24})", idMiddleware);
server.get("/test:num(\d+)", numMiddleware);

server.get("/parent:parentId/test:id([a-f\d]{24})", idMiddleware);
server.get("/parent:parentId/test:num(\d+)", numMiddleware);

A custom middleware scenario.

function getMiddleware(parmasPath, objPath) {
  return (req, res, next) => {
    const obj = service.getObjById(req.params[paramsPath]);
    const value = obj[objPath];
  });
}

server.get("/test:id([a-f\d]{24})", getMiddleware("id", "id"));
server.get("/test:num(\d+)", getMiddleware("num", "numericId"));

Example API

You can use regular expressions to validate parameters by including the regular expression in brackets after the parameter name. The pattern /test:id(\d+) will match the url /test/8 and res.params.id will be 8; however the url /test/hello will not match.

Are you willing and able to implement this?

I'm willing to help implement this if I can be pointed in the right direction.

[retrohacker]

Yes! This would be amazing ❤️

We have a feature request asking for this here #1292

I believe the current proposal is to use path-to-regexp

[stevehipwell]

@retrohacker - Is there some developer documentation?

[hekike]

Restify 7.x router is wildcard based, please see migration guide.