easy-peasy-express

A super simple way to configure URL routes in your express app. It's all about dat config, yo!

Install

npm install easy-peasy-express --save

Usage

easy-peasy-express requires two lines of code when you create your Express.js server instance. Everything else is 100% config-driven.

The Javascript

// Obviously, we'll need to require express and easy-peasy-express.
'use strict';

const path = require('path');
const express = require('express'),
      easyPeasy = require('easy-peasy-express');

const server = express();
server.use(require('body-parser').json());
easyPeasy(server, './routes.json', './controllers', { ...options });

const httpListener = server.listen(8084, function () {
    console.log('Express is now listening for connections on port ' + httpListener.address().port);
});

Options

verbose

Determines whether to log the binding of routes and rules to the node console. Defaults to false.

serverPort

Required to be set if you set the redirectTo and keepOldURL to true (see routeConfig below), as it's needed to maintain the same-origin policy when requesting content from the redirectTo url and keeping the old URL. Defaults to 80

authCookieName

Provide the cookie name that is being used to house your authentication cookie. If this is set, the presence of a cookie that matches this cookie name will assume the user is authenticated. NOTE: This assumes there will be a req.cookies property available to read on the Express res object, which is typically provided via a middleware like cookie-parser.

authCheckFnc

Custom function that accepts Express's req and res arguments. Use this when you want to specify custom logic to determine if your requests are authenticated for routes that have their requiresAuth options set to true. Defaults to function () { return true; }.

logFnc

If you'd like to log any messages to a custom location / logging implementation that are resulting from settings the verbose flag to true, provide a function here. Function will take a single argument, which is the message trying to be logged. Defaults to function (msg) { console.log(msg); }

Route Config

As mentioned before, easy-peasy-express tries to remove the programmatic setting / wiring of server routes by abstracting that away so that your routes are all based on a config file.

Your route config file should be in a valid JSON format, though it can be of any file extension type, so long as the file's content is valid utf8 text.

Sample Route Config

{
    "/assets": {
        "staticFiles": true,
        "allowedExt": [".html", ".js", ".css"],
        "staticDir": "/src"
    },
   "/test":{
      "verb":"get",
      "actionMethod":"test",
      "requiresAuth":true
   },
   "/login":[
      {
         "verb":"get",
         "actionMethod":"loginPage",
         "isLogin":true,
         "headers":{
            "Content-Type":"text/html; charset=utf8",
            "X-Suck-It-Trebek":"Okay!"
         }
      },
      {
         "verb":"post",
         "actionMethod":"loginPage",
         "isLogin":true,
         "headers":{
            "Content-Type":"text/html; charset=utf8",
            "X-Suck-It-Trebek":"Okay!"
         }
      }
   ],
   "/redirectPlease":{
      "verb":"get",
      "redirectTo":"/login",
      "keepOldURL":true,
      "headers":{
         "Content-Type":"text/html; charset=utf8"
      }
   },
   "/deeper/still":{
      "verb":"post",
      "actionMethod":"testPost"
   },
   "/big/fat/put/:someRandomId":{
      "verb":"put",
      "actionMethod":"testPutOnSameController"
   },
   "/user/:group/:userId":{
      "verb":"delete",
      "actionMethod":"superAwesomeDelete"
   }
}

You'll notice that each route is structured in a /{url}/{stuff}/{here}: { ...options } format. The object's key becomes the URL itself. The options can come in the form of a single option, or multiple options via array syntax. This would allow you to specify multiple verbs per a given URL route. An options object can consist of the following:

actionMethod

The function name that this URL route will be bound to. Anytime this URL is requested, this function will be called and provided Express's req and res arguments. This function definitely needs to exist on one of the controllers in your controllers directory you specified when you initialized easy-peasy-express. You can be vague and simply specify a function name that exists on one of your controllers, or you can be more specific and name space the action method to a specific controller in the {controllerName}.{functionName} format. NOTE: this option does not need to be provided if you've set the redirectTo property.

requiresAuth

true or false for whether or not this URL route should only be accessible to a logged-in / authenticated user. Defaults to undefined.

isLogin

When used in conjuction with requiresAuth: true, this is the URL Route that a request will be redirected to if the user's request is not authenticated. Defaults to undefined.

redirectTo

When set, will cause the current URL route to be redirected to the URL specified in this property. Defaults to undefined.

keepOldURL

This is typically used in-conjunction with the redirectTo property. Very useful for a common single-page-application architecture where multiple URL routes need to redirect to the same View / Page. Behind the scenes, this is using the request library to perform a GET request on the redirectTo property, with all of the original request's headers intact. NOTE: Only GET requests are supported with this option.

headers

JSON object with any headers you would like to be set for a given request. Useful for changing from Express's default Content-Type, setting custom headers, etc.

staticFiles

Settings this property to true will setup your route key to have all files underneath it be served up as static files. Use this in conjunction with allowedExt and staticDir to properly configure serving of static files. Defaults to undefined.

allowedExt

An array of file extensions that are allowed to be served by this route (see sample config above for an example of extension). Use this when setting staticFiles to true. Defaults to undefined.

staticDir

A relative directory where your static files exist in your project. Only files that match one of the entries in the allowedExt array will be served. Defaults to undefined.

Issues

I really want this package to be super simple to use and useful for the majority of all of your routing needs. Please feel free to report any issues via Github issues. If you want to make any improvements, please issue a pull request and I will review your changes ASAP!

License

MIT