I am using an href to link the user to a route. My problem is that I need to send a parameter to the dashboard while clicking on the link. The easiest way to do this would be to get the id or name of the href in the app.js and send it to the dashboard.

Here is my code:

 //the href in the index.ejs
 <a href="/dashboard" id="ANDROID">ANDROID</a> 

 //in the app.js
 app.get('/dashboard', function(req, res) {
     var url = req.url;
     console.log("url: " + url);    //prints out url: /dashboard
     var id = req.url.id;
     console.log("id: " + id);      //prints out id: undefined
 });

How can I grap the id or name of the href?

I am using an href to link the user to a route. My problem is that I need to send a parameter to the dashboard while clicking on the link. The easiest way to do this would be to get the id or name of the href in the app.js and send it to the dashboard.

Here is my code:

 //the href in the index.ejs
 <a href="/dashboard" id="ANDROID">ANDROID</a> 

 //in the app.js
 app.get('/dashboard', function(req, res) {
     var url = req.url;
     console.log("url: " + url);    //prints out url: /dashboard
     var id = req.url.id;
     console.log("id: " + id);      //prints out id: undefined
 });

How can I grap the id or name of the href?

• javascript
• node.js
• express

Share Improve this question Follow asked Oct 9, 2014 at 12:09 sanyoohsanyooh 1,64122 gold badges2121 silver badges3535 bronze badges 1

• It's hard to know what you are actually trying to achieve, but at a guess I'd say that it's because req.url only returns the url and doesn't have information on the link that it came from. I'd consider argument passing, express facilitates this: expressjs./4x/api.html#app.param – NMunro Commented Oct 9, 2014 at 12:20

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 3

If I understand correctly, you need to pass the parameter to the URL. The ID of the "a" element is only a DOM ID and it is not in any way connected to the URL the link leads to.

You could try something like this:

<a href="/dashboard?id=ANDROID" id="ANDROID">ANDROID</a>

Then in the code:

app.get('/dashboard', function(req, res) {
    var id = req.query.id;
    ...
});