Why does Echo allow route params like /users/:id to match /users/3//////? Expected strict behavior

[bukandicki]

Hi Echo team 👋
First of all, thank you for the amazing framework. I’m still a Go beginner, so sorry if this is a basic question.

I’m a bit confused about route parameter behavior in Echo.

I have a route like this:

e.GET("/users/:id", handler)

When I access:

/users/3

✅ This works (expected)

But when I access:

/users/3/

or even:

/users/3//////

✅ This also works, and the id parameter becomes "3//////" (or similar).

---

What I expected

I expected the router to be strict, where:

• /users/3 → ✅ allowed
• /users/3/ → ❌ not allowed
• /users/3////// → ❌ not allowed

Because semantically, I thought :id should only represent a single clean path segment, not include extra slashes.

---

My questions

1. Is this behavior intentional by design?
2. Why are extra slashes considered part of the route parameter instead of being rejected?
3. Is there a recommended or idiomatic way in Echo to enforce strict routing (similar to Express default behavior), where /users/3//// would not match /users/:id?
4. Should this be handled via middleware (like path normalization), or is it expected to be handled manually in handlers?

---

Context

I understand that Echo tries to be closer to raw HTTP behavior, but from an API design perspective (especially for REST APIs), strict routing feels safer and more predictable.

Again, apologies if this is a beginner misunderstanding — I’d really appreciate some clarification 🙏

Thank you!

[aldas]

well, there is no specification on this. Probably from start (early days of the library), the last parameter in route, if it is defined without / will work as catchall parameter /:id == /*. And all of this predates current Go standard library mux pattern matching logic about ~8-9 years.

There is remove slash middleware: https://echo.labstack.com/docs/middleware/trailing-slash#remove-trailing-slash

[Felipeness]

$(cat <<'ENDOFBODY'
Echo doesn't strip trailing slashes from route params by default, and that's by design. The param captures exactly what's in the URL segment — if someone hits /users/42/, the :id param will be "42/", slash included.

Two ways to deal with this depending on what you want:

Drop trailing slashes globally with the RemoveTrailingSlash middleware:

e := echo.New()
e.Pre(middleware.RemoveTrailingSlash())

This redirects (or rewrites, depending on config) /users/42/ → /users/42 before routing even kicks in, so your params come through clean.

Strip it per-handler if you only care in specific places:

e.GET("/users/:id", func(c echo.Context) error {
    id := strings.TrimRight(c.Param("id"), "/")
    // ...
})

I'd go with the middleware approach — it's consistent and you don't have to remember to trim in every handler. The reason Echo doesn't normalize by default is that some APIs actually rely on trailing slashes being meaningful (REST conventions where /resources/ and /resources are different endpoints). So they leave it up to you.
ENDOFBODY
)