express-dryroutes

Provides an urlFor() Express view helper (minor inspiration from Rails’ url_for) to generate URLs based on named routes.

Since Express does not natively provide a mechanism to assign routes names, an alternative syntax is used to define routes that Express still understands. Do file an issue (or send a pull request) if it hinders any native flexibility!

express-dryroutes also provides an option to define and enforce HTTPS routes. By default, a request is considered HTTPS if req.secure is true. You might need to turn on trust proxy for this to work.

Express 3 is supported from 1.0.0.

Install

$ npm install express-dryroutes

Caveats

The * catch-all route behaves differently. If you need to use it, do it using the usual Express way (if you need named error page routes, you‘re probably doing it wrong).

app.all('*', function (req, res, next) {
  // 404 Not found
  controllers.error(req, res, 404);
});

Usage

Configuration

var dryroutes = require('express-dryroutes');

app.configure('development', function () {
  dryroutes.configure({
    host: 'example.local:3000'
  });
});

app.configure('production', function () {
  dryroutes.configure({
    host: 'www.example.com'
  });
});

• host: required. This is used to generate absolute URLs. Corresponds to host in the url module.

Define Routes

Route Parameters:

var routes = {
  'route name': {
    path: '/url-path/:param1/:param2' 
    regexp: /post\/(\d+)\/([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+)/,
    handlers: {
      get: function (req, res, next) {},
      post: [auth, controller.article.post]
    },
    enforceHttps: true
  },
  'another route name': {
    …
  },
  …
}

• path: required. This is used to generate all URLs.
• regexp: optional. The same regex object that gets passed into Express routes.
• handlers: required. Method names correspond to 'app.get/post/all/…()' as keys, and a middleware function or an array of middleware functions as values
• https: optional. Defaults to false. If truthy, the generated url will be in https (use enforceHttps to set up automatic redirect).
• enforceHttps: optional. Defaults to false. Sets up an automatic 301 redirect from http to https; automatically assumes that https is true.

Example:

Given the following native Express routes:

app.get('/', controllers.home);

app.get(/\/user\/([a-z0-9]+)/, req.user.isAuthorized, controllers.user.get);

app.get('/item/:id', {
  get: function (req, res, next) {
    if (/\d+/.test(req.param('id'))) {
      controllers.item.show(req, res);
    } else {
      next();
    }
  }
});

app.get('/login', controllers.logIn.get);
app.post('/login', controllers.logIn.post);

They now look like this:

var routes = {
  'home': {
    path: '/',
    handlers: {
      get: controllers.home
    }
  },

  'user page': {
    path: '/user/:id',
    regexp: /\/user\/([a-z0-9]+)/,
    handlers: {
      get: [req.user.isAuthorized, controllers.user.get]
    },
  },

  'item details': {
    path: '/item/:id',
    handlers: {
      get: function (req, res, next) {
        if (/\d+/.test(req.param('id'))) {
          controllers.item.show(req, res);
        } else {
          next();
        }
      }
    }
  },

  'login': {
    path: '/login',
    handlers: {
      get: controllers.logIn.get,
      post: controllers.logIn.post
    },
    https: true
  }
};

// Pass in the Express app object and the routes object
dryroutes(app, routes);

Generate URLs in Views

Passed-in params are matched against the named params in the route path. Any non-matching params key-value pairs will be appended to the url as query strings as parsed by url.format().

If the path contains an optional named param (like /path/:param?) that wasn’t substituted, it will be removed along with the leading slash (becomes /path).

Like in the example above, regex routes require a path with named params for this to work.

// /user/good-guy-greg?foo=bar
urlFor('user page', {
  params: {
    id: 'good-guy-greg',
    foo: 'bar'
  },
  absolute: false
})

// https://localhost:3000/login
urlFor('login')

• params: required for paths with named params. An object of key-value pairs.
• absolute: optional. Defaults to false. Generates an absolute URL (Note that HTTPS routes are always absolute).

Jade example:

// <a href="/item/8">View Item Name</a>
a(href=urlFor('item details', {
  id: item.id
}) View #{item.name}

Pull requests for other templating engines are welcome!

Test

npm test will invoke an Express server instance and run a few tests against it.