id: version-5.2.0-wildcards title: Wildcards
Sometimes you will want to apply the same rules to all items of an array or all keys of some object.
That's what the *
character - also known as a wildcard -- is for.
For example, imagine you want to validate that all addresses have a valid postal code, and that the number of each address is sanitized as an integer number.
We can do this with the following code:
const express = require('express');
const { check } = require('express-validator/check');
const { sanitize } = require('express-validator/filter');
const app = express();
app.use(express.json());
app.post('/addresses', [
check('addresses.*.postalCode').isPostalCode(),
sanitize('addresses.*.number').toInt()
], (req, res) => {
// Handle the request
});
This will handle cases where you send an array of addresses:
{
"addresses": [
{ "postalCode": "2010", "number": "500" },
{ "postalCode": "", "number": "501" },
]
}
...or even cases where you want a predefined set of addresses:
{
"addresses": {
"home": { "postalCode": "", "number": "501" },
"work": { "postalCode": "2010", "number": "500" }
}
}