Express JSON API

This is an easy to use Express.js route helper that adapts your Mongoose models to jsonapi.org API endpoints. Basically it allows you to do CRUD on your mongoose models with some simple configuration.

Note; this is still very much a work in progress, but I would love to hear your thoughts.

Install

npm install express-json-api --save

Requirements

You are also required to be running expressjs and mongoose.

npm install express --save
npm install mongoose --save

Quick Start

var express = require('express');
var expressJsonApi = require('express-json-api');
var get = expressJsonApi.controllers.get;
var getList = expressJsonApi.controllers.getList;
var patch = expressJsonApi.controllers.patch;
var post = expressJsonApi.controllers.post;
var userModel = require('../models/user'); // a reference to your mongoose models

var config = {
    routes: [
        {
            endpoint: '/users',
            model: userModel,
            limit: 20,
            id: '_id',
            methods: {
                get: get.default,
                getList: getList.default,
                patch: patch.default,
                post: post.default
            },
            search: {
                active: true,
                fields: ['first-name']
            },
            sanitize: {
                active: true
            }
        }
    ]
};

expressJsonApi.factory(app, config);

Now you can access your users by:

• GET /users to get all users
• POST /users to create a single user
• GET /users/:id to get a single user
• PATCH /users/:id to update a single user

Filters, Sort, Pagination and Search

There are a number of modifers to help return the correct data. These all follow the recommendations of jsonapi.org

• GET /users?filter[first-name]=Elon&filter[last-name]=Musk to get all users with the first name "Elon" and the last name "Musk".
• GET /users?sort=last-name to get all users and sort by descending last name.
• GET /users?q=Elon to get all users with "Elon" in the first-name field.
• GET /users?page[limit]=1&page[offset]=3 to get 1 user starting at the 4th.

You can, of course, combine all those together into one long query:

GET /users?filter[country]=Australia&sort=-last-name,first-name&page[limit]=10 to get all Australian users, sort by descending last name, then ascending first name and limit the response to 10 items per page.

TODO

• Write more thorough documentation on sanitizers, how to override individual implementations, and how to use custom serializers.
• Create DELETE functionality.
• Implement:
  • Stronger jsonapi response standards (eg. { data: { type: "users" } }). See http://jsonapi.org/format/#document-resource-objects
  • jsonapi relationships and links.
  • Standardised error message.
  • Dev/debugging mode so that stack traces aren't displayed in production systems.