What is the meaning of "...args" (three dots) in a function definition?

Question

It was really confusing for me to read this syntax in Javascript:

router.route('/:id')
.put((...args) => controller.update(...args))
.get((...args) => controller.findById(...args));

What does ...args mean?

Answer 1

Essentially, what's being done is this:

.put((a, b, c) => controller.update(a, b, c))

Of course, what if we want 4 parameters, or 5, or 6? We don't want to write a new version of the function for all possible quantities of parameters.

The spread operator (...) allows us to accept a variable number of arguments and store them in an array. We then use the spread operator again to pass them to the update function:

.put((...args) => controller.update(...args))

This is transparent to the update function, who receives them as normal arguments.

Answer 2

The meaning of “…args” (three dots) is Javascript spread operator.

function sum(x, y, z) {
  return x + y + z;
}

const numbers = [1, 2, 3];

console.log(sum(...numbers));
// expected output: 6

Answer 3

If you know some Python syntaxes, it is exactly the same as *args. Since *args (Python) is tuple object and Javascript has no tuple like Python, ..args is an Array object.