Kapeta NodeJS Server

This provides an HTTP server for Kapeta blocks.

It wraps the express server and provides plumbing for the blocks.

The Server class is implemented in index.ts.

Features

Frontend

Serves the frontend assets for the block when applicable.

Uses webpack to build the frontend assets and serves them from memory in dev mode - with hot reloading. Will serve the assets from the dist folder in production mode.

See the Server.configureFrontend() method for details.

The webpack server is implemented in src/webpack.ts.

Templates

The templates are managed via express template engine. In short, express needs to know where the views live, and which renderer to use.

Make sure to include all parameters in the template, otherwise the block will not work as expected.

// Set up webpack middleware and render methods
const DIST_DIR = Path.resolve(__dirname, "../dist");
const webpackConfig = require("../webpack.development.config");
server.configureFrontend(DIST_DIR, webpackConfig);

// Set up templating
const hbs = createHandlebars({
    extname: '.hbs',
    defaultLayout: false,
    helpers: {
        // Recommended helper to serialize values in handlebars
        toJSON: (obj: any) => JSON.stringify(obj),
    },
});
server.express().engine('hbs', hbs.engine);
server.express().set('views', Path.resolve(__dirname, "../templates"));
server.express().set('view engine', 'hbs');

server.get('/', async (req, res, next) => {
    // render the main template e.g. templates/main.hbs
    await res.renderPage('main');
});

Template parameters include:

• baseURL usually sets the HTML base tag in the template
• scripts is a list of <script> tags to load the app JS bundle.
• styles is a list of <style> tags to load the app CSS bundle.

Healthcheck

The server provides a standard Kapeta healthcheck endpoint at /.kapeta/health.

You can disable this using the disableHealthcheck option.

You can also override the default health check by subclassing the Server and overriding the configureHealthCheck method.

Catch-all Handler

Will add a catch-all route that will return a 418 for any request that does not match a route.

This makes it easier to determine if a request is not being handled by the server.

You can disable the catch-all route using the disableCatchAll option.

You can also override the default catch all by subclassing the Server and overriding the configureCatchAll method.

Error handling

The server will catch any errors thrown by the routes and return a consistent response. If the error contains a "statusCode" property it will be used as the response status code.

You can disable this using the disableErrorHandling option.

You can also override the default error handling by subclassing the Server and overriding the configureErrorHandler method.