Routing Parameters

Traditional web frameworks leave room for error in routing by using strings for route parameter names and types. Vapor takes advantage of Swift's closures to provide a safer and more intuitive method for accessing route parameters.

Seealso

Route parameters refer to segments of the URL path (e.g., /users/:id). For query parameters (e.g., ?foo=bar) see request query parameters.

Type Safe

To create a type safe route simply replace one of the parts of your path with a Type.

drop.get("users", Int.parameter) { req in
    let userId = try req.parameters.next(Int.self)
    return "You requested User #\(userId)"
}

This creates a route that matches users/:id where the :id is an Int. Here's what it would look like using manual route parameters.

drop.get("users", ":id") { request in
    guard let userId = request.parameters["id"]?.int else {
        throw Abort.badRequest
    }

    return "You requested User #\(userId)"
}

Here you can see that type safe routing saves ~3 lines of code and also prevents runtime errors like misspelling :id.

Parameterizable

Any type conforming to Parameterizable can be used as a parameter. By default, all Vapor Models conform.

Using this, our previous example with users can be further simplified.

drop.get("users", User.parameter) { req in
    let user = try req.parameters.next(User.self)

    return "You requested \(user.name)"
}

Here the identifier supplied is automatically used to lookup a user. For example, if /users/5 is requested, the User model will be asked for a user with identifier 5. If one is found, the request succeeds and the closure is called. If not, a not found error is thrown.

Here is what this would look like if we looked the model up manually.

drop.get("users", Int.parameter) { req in
    let userId = try req.parameters.next(Int.self)
    guard let user = try User.find(userId) else {
        throw Abort.notFound
    }

    return "You requested \(user.name)"
}

Protocol

You can conform your own types to Parameterizable.

import Routing

extension Foo: Parameterizable {
    /// This unique slug is used to identify
    /// the parameter in the router
    static var uniqueSlug: String {
        return "foo"
    }


    static func make(for parameter: String) throws -> Foo {
        /// custom lookup logic here
        /// the parameter string contains the information
        /// parsed from the URL.
        ...
    }
}

Now you can use this type for type safe routing.

drop.get("users", "nickname", Foo.parameter) { req in
    let foo = try req.parameters.next(Foo.self)
    ...
}

Groups

Type-safe parameters also work with groups.

let userGroup = drop.grouped("users", User.parameter)
userGroup.get("messages") { req in
    let user = try req.parameters.next(User.self)

    ...
}