echo/website/content/guide/routing.md

+++ title = "Routing" description = "Routing HTTP request in Echo" [menu.side] name = "Routing" parent = "guide" weight = 4 +++

Echo's router is based on radix tree makings route lookup really fast, it leverages sync pool to reuse memory and achieve zero dynamic memory allocation with no GC overhead.

Routes can be registered by specifying HTTP method, path and a matching handler. For example, code below registers a route for method GET, path /hello and a handler which sends Hello, World! HTTP response.

// Handler
func hello(c echo.Context) error {
  	return c.String(http.StatusOK, "Hello, World!")
}

// Route
e.GET("/hello", hello)

You can use Echo.Any(path string, h Handler) to register a handler for all HTTP methods. If you want to register it for some methods use Echo.Match(methods []string, path string, h Handler).

Echo defines handler function as func(echo.Context) error where echo.Context primarily holds HTTP request and response interfaces.

Match-any

Matches zero or more characters in the path. For example, pattern /users/* will match:

• /users/
• /users/1
• /users/1/files/1
• /users/anything...

Path matching order

• Static
• Param
• Match any

Example

e.GET("/users/:id", func(c echo.Context) error {
	return c.String(http.StatusOK, "/users/:id")
})

e.GET("/users/new", func(c echo.Context) error {
	return c.String(http.StatusOK, "/users/new")
})

e.GET("/users/1/files/*", func(c echo.Context) error {
	return c.String(http.StatusOK, "/users/1/files/*")
})

Above routes would resolve in the following order:

• /users/new
• /users/:id
• /users/1/files/*

Routes can be written in any order.

Group

Echo#Group(prefix string, m ...Middleware) *Group

Routes with common prefix can be grouped to define a new sub-router with optional middleware. In addition to specified middleware group also inherits parent middleware. To add middleware later in the group you can use Group.Use(m ...Middleware). Groups can also be nested.

In the code below, we create an admin group which requires basic HTTP authentication for routes /admin/*.

g := e.Group("/admin")
g.Use(middleware.BasicAuth(func(username, password string) bool {
	if username == "joe" && password == "secret" {
		return true
	}
	return false
}))

URI building

Echo.URI can be used to generate URI for any handler with specified path parameters. It's helpful to centralize all your URI patterns which ease in refactoring your application.

e.URI(h, 1) will generate /users/1 for the route registered below

// Handler
h := func(c echo.Context) error {
	return c.String(http.StatusOK, "OK")
}

// Route
e.GET("/users/:id", h)