/$$$$$$$  /$$$$$$$$                    
| $$__  $$| $$_____/                    
| $$  \ $$| $$                          
| $$  | $$| $$$$$                       
| $$  | $$| $$__/                       
| $$  | $$| $$                          
| $$$$$$$/| $$$$$$$$                    
|_______/ |________/                    
                                        
                                        
                                        
  /$$$$$$   /$$$$$$  /$$$$$$$  /$$$$$$$$
 /$$__  $$ /$$__  $$| $$__  $$| $$_____/
| $$  \__/| $$  \ $$| $$  \ $$| $$      
| $$      | $$  | $$| $$  | $$| $$$$$   
| $$      | $$  | $$| $$  | $$| $$__/   
| $$    $$| $$  | $$| $$  | $$| $$      
|  $$$$$$/|  $$$$$$/| $$$$$$$/| $$$$$$$$
 \______/  \______/ |_______/ |________/
                                        
                                        

                                                                                                   
Mapping Wildcard Paths - Express Endpoint

=====================================================
Edited: May 6th 2025 
Written by Mason Wright
=====================================================

Learn how to map wildcard paths to system paths for Svelte like endpoints in Express.

In this tutorial, we will map file routes to endpoints that we can call and return with express.
The end goal is to take paths from the file system like below and extract any variables and return the
full URL and variables in an object. The variables will be defined by putting the variable name inside of
square brackets and the endpoint function will be a file in the last folder named +server.js.

+---------------------------------------------------+
| [                                                 |
|   "./src/accounts/create",                        |
|   "./src/accounts/delete",                        |
|   "./src/assets/[collection][name]",              |
|   "./src/templates/[name]"                        |
| ]                                                 |
+---------------------------------------------------+

Here is the function I used to take the file paths and collapse them into paths that can be matched by our
routing function in the next tutorial. I've added comments explaining how it works line by line.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| function collapsePaths(paths) {                                                                          |
|   // We will store the Objects that contain the URL and Params here                                      |
|   let collapsed = [];                                                                                    |
|   // Loop through the paths                                                                              |
|   for (let i = 0; i < paths.length; i++) {                                                               |
|     const path = paths[I];                                                                               |
|     // Use RegExp to get all the [variables] from the path                                               |
|     // vals will only contain the variable names not the square brackets                                 |
|     let vals = path.match(/([^[]+(?=]))/g);                                                              |
|     // If you have the directories setup correctly each path should end in                               |
|     // "+server.js" here we will remove that                                                             |
|     let ast = path.replace("+server.js", "").slice(5);                                                   |
|     // Here's where we check if the path has varibles                                                    |
|     if (vals) {                                                                                          |
|       // If it does we need to replace them with the wildcard indicator "*"                              |
|       for (let i = 0; i < vals.length; i++) {                                                            |
|         ast = ast.replace(`[${vals[i]}]`, "*");                                                          |
|       }                                                                                                  |
|     }                                                                                                    |
|     // Add the processed path to the array                                                               |
|     collapsed.push({                                                                                     |
|       url: ast,                                                                                          |
|       params: vals,                                                                                      |
|     });                                                                                                  |
|   }                                                                                                      |
|   return collapsed;                                                                                      |
| }                                                                                                        |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

This function will only be run once to get the location and variables of the endpoints on the server for further processing.