retorter

A request/response wrapper for use at the very last part of your routing.

usage

Say you have a route:

"abc/`id`": function(request, response, tokens){

}

To respond ok with some data in the form of JSON, you would usually have to:

"abc/`id`": function(request, response, tokens){
    someFunction(tokens.id, function(error, data){
        response.end(JSON.stringify(data));
    });
}

Which isn't so bad, but then handle the error case

"abc/`id`": function(request, response, tokens){
    someFunction(function(error, data){
        if(error){
            //Log maybe?
            console.log(error);

            // set the 500 code
            response.statusCode = 500;

            // API error, so stringify it.
            response.end(JSON.stringify(error));

            return;
        }

        response.end(JSON.stringify(data));
    });
}

Again, not terrible, but usually API routers do the same thing over and over.

With retorter, you can define a set of actions that can be performed on a request, and use them to respond without having to do all that setup every time.

var retorter = require('retort')({
    ok: function(request, response, data){
        response.statusCode = 200;

        // We are building a JSON API, so always stringify.
        response.end(JSON.stringify(data));
    },
    error: function(request, response, error){
        console.log(error);
        response.statusCode = 500;
        response.end(JSON.stringify(error));
    }
});

then down in a route:

"abc/`id`": retorter(function(retort, tokens){
    someFunction(tokens.id, function(error, data){
        if(error){
            return retort.error(error);
        }

        retort.ok(data);
    });
})

Which, if you use something like wraperr can be even tighter:

"abc/`id`": retorter(function(retort, tokens){
    someFunction(tokens.id, wraperr(retort.ok, retort.error));
})

You can also get access to the origininal request and response objects via the passed in retort object

"abc/`id`": retorter(function(retort, tokens){

    retort.request

    retort.response

})