Degen Route Loader

Route file configuration for express

See the unit test for implementation instructions

In your express initialization code

    import DegenRouteLoader from 'degen-route-loader'

    import APIController from '../controllers/APIController'

    const Routes = JSON.parse( fs.readFileSync('./server/routes/routes.json') )

    const apiController=new APIController()
            

   

    const app = express()

    const degenRouteLoader = new DegenRouteLoader()
    degenRouteLoader.loadRoutes( app, Routes , apiController  )
    // Dont forget you can load routes for multiple controllers by calling this multiple times

    app.listen(apiPort, () => {
    console.log(`API Server listening at http://localhost:${apiPort}`)
    })

Anatomy of a route

Each route must have the following:

Type: A string, either 'get' or 'post' for the type of REST request to expect

uri: The uri onto which to expose the route with express

method: The name of the controller method to call (the method must extend APICall

Each route may additionally specify the following optional attributes:

controller: The name of the controller that has the methods for this route

appendParams: An object that will be appended to 'req' just before it is passed to the method in the controller. This will be appended at 'req.router.params'

preHooks: An array of {method:string, controller:string} which will be run before the primary method. If any of these return {success:false, error?: string} then the overall REST api call will fail due to that prehook. Useful for authentication prehooks and such - which will likely be shared by multiple routes.

In routes.json

[ {"type":"get","uri":"/api/ping","method":"ping","controller":"api"} ]

In your controller class

    import { APIMethod } from "degen-route-loader"


    export default class APIController  {

        //Returns an AssertionResponse which flows back through this plugin 
        ping: APIMethod =  async (req: any) => {
            return {success:true, data:'pong'}
        }

    }

Assertion Response

An assertion response is the response that your api controller returns from its controller method. It contains :

success - A boolean indicating if the method errored or not (prehooks that error will cancel the route flow)

data - Optional param that can contain anything. This will be sent to the user as json by default (no special action)

error - Optional string for an error message to return if success is false

specialAction - Optional string for specifying that you want express (via this plugin) to perform an action other than returning data as json. See the section titled Special Actions.

Special Actions

You can specify a specialAction on any route or prehook in order to accomplish special tasks like a redirect or setting cookies.

setCookie - Sets a cookie on the client side using data.key and data.value. Most typically used in a preHook so that the primary route can then redirect. Useful for authentication flow.

reject - Will return a 401 status code

redirect - Will redirect to data.url

If a prehook performs a "response terminating" action like a reject or redirect then no other prehooks will run nor will the primary route. The route response flow will end.