express-autoapi

A node module for Express that automatically creates routes based on files in a folder. Point the api at a folder containing JavaScript files that contain API routes, and the routes will be automatically loaded and included in the routing system.

The initial use-case was for quickly building a Javascript API based simply on the files that exist in a folder, but they could be used to return any kind of result.

Installation

Install from Node Package Manager: npm install express-autoapi --save

Quick start

Include the module: var autoapi = require('express-autoapi');

and set up the routes:

autoapi.setup({
    app: app,    // The express app instance
    source: path.join(__dirname, 'api') // the path to find the api files
});

Given the following folder structure in the root of your node app:

/api
 |-- test.js
 |-- products.js
 |-- ham.js
 |-- users
  	 --/ index.js
  	 --/ admin.js

The following base roots will be created:

/api/test
/api/products
/api/ham
/api/users
/api/users/admin

Inside the route files, simply manipulate the Express Router in the same way that you normally would when creating routes for an application:

// test.js
var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
	console.log("Api hit..");
	res.send({ message: 'Hello from /api/test!' });
});

// Serve /api/test/12
router.get('/:id', function(req, res) {
    res.send({ id: req.params.id });
});

module.exports = router;

Thus, this module can be used to work with any existing application where the routing files are kept together in a folder.

Applying routes to the root url

By default, creating a module with the name index.js inside your api source folder will cause the routes to be applied to /api instead of /api/<module name>. This default name can be configured using the rootModule setting:

autoapi.setup({
    app: app,    // The express app instance
    source: path.join(__dirname, 'api'), // the path to find the api files
    rootModule: 'test'  // cause all roots in 'test.js' to exist on '/api' instead of '/api/test'
});

Options

app

required - sets the express application instance to use when defining the roots (required)

source

required - sets the folder to look for routing files (required). Should be an absolute path, or anything that is accepted by fs.readFileSync.

root

optional - sets the url root of the api. Default is '/api'

rootModule

optional - nominates a module name to use as the 'default', where the routes are applied to the api root. Default is 'index'.

debug

optional - enables debug mode (false by default), which writes out debug information to the console about the files that it has found to generate the routing information from and their urls.