kontrolleur

kontrolleur provides better routing and controllers for express 3.x

Installation

Inside your express project, do:

$ npm install kontrolleur --save

Then, instantiate kontrolleur like this:

var kontrolleur = require('kontrolleur');
var express = require('express');
var app = express();

new kontrolleur(app, {
  routes: __dirname + '/routes',

  controllerPath: __dirname + '/controllers',
  controllerSuffix: '_controller',

  helperPath: __dirname + '/helpers',
  helperSuffix: '_helper'
});

app.listen(3030);

Routes

Your routes file should export a function with one parameter, the map. The map has functions for all http methods. The first parameter defines the route, the second defines the controller and action:

module.exports = function (map) {
  map.get('/', 'index#index');
};

map.controller

Next to all http methods, the map object also provides a controller method which finds all available actions of a controller and creates get routes for it:

module.exports = function (map) {
  map.controller('index');
};

map.namespace

The map object also provides a namespace method which calls the passed callback with a new map object that automatically prefixes all routes with the given string:

module.exports = function (map) {
  map.namespace('/api', function (map) {
    map.namespace('/v1', function (map) {
      map.get('books.json', 'api/v1/books#index');
    });
  });
};

Controllers

Your custom controllers should extend kontrolleur.Controller by using Controller.extend(). Each prototype function becomes a controller action in the end.

var Controller = require('kontrolleur').Controller;
var IndexController = Controller.extend({
  index: function () {
    this.res.send('test response');
  }
});

module.exports = IndexController;

Promise-backed actions

Starting with 0.2.0, kontrolleur supports Promise-backed actions. Rejected promises will automatically render a 500 Internal server error.

var Controller = require('kontrolleur').Controller;
var IndexController = Controller.extend({
  success: function () {
    var self = this;
    return User.find(1)
      .then(function (user) {
        self.json(user)
      })
  },
  failure: function () {
    return Promise.reject(new Error('Error message'))
  }
});

module.exports = IndexController;

Before filters

You can override a controller's constructor and add before filters that will be executed before all actions or only specific actions:

var Controller = require('kontrolleur').Controller;
var UserController = Controller.extend({
  constructor: function () {
    Controller.apply(this, arguments); // call parent constructor

    this.beforeFilter(function () {
      this.res.end('fail - action will not be dispatched');
    }, except: ['success']);

    this.beforeFilter(function (next) {
      next(); // pass the filter - action will be dispatched
    }, only: ['success']);
  },

  success: function () {
    this.res.send('success');
  },

  fail: function () {
    this.res.send('success (this should not happen)');
  }
});

module.exports = UserController;

Helpers

You can create application-wide and controller-specific helpers in the helpers folder you have defined. If you create a file called helpers/index_helper.js with the following content, you can use the testHelper in all views that are rendered by your IndexController:

var IndexHelper = {
  testHelper: function () {
    return 'hello world';
  }
};

module.exports = IndexHelper;

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013 Sascha Gehlich and FILSH Media GmbH

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.