siren-resource

Resourceful routing with siren+json hypermedia for Express.

Status - Developer Preview

Here be dragons.

What it does

Creates a bunch of routes for you automatically, based on resources, and maps them to actions. Here's the mapping, right from the source:

// GET /resource -> index
app.get( path,
  handler(path, 'index', options) );

// POST /resource -> create
app.post( path, 
  handler(path, 'create', options) );

// GET /resource/:id -> show
app.get( path + '/:id',
  handler(path, 'show', options) );

// PUT /resource/:id -> update / append
app.put( path + '/:id',
  handler(path, 'put', options) );

// DELETE /resource/:id -> delete
app.delete( path + '/:id',
  handler(path, 'delete', options) );

It also automatically sets content type to siren+json, and provides a super easy .entity() function to help you encode your responses so that they conform to the spec.

Usage

'use strict';

var express = require('express'),
  http = require('http'),
  resource = require('siren-resource'),
  bodyParser = require('body-parser'),
  methodOverride = require('method-override'),

  collection = resource.adapters.memory,  
  app = express(),
  server,
  port = 3000,

  // Collections are the database abstraction layer
  // that backs your resources. You can initialize
  // them by passing in an array of models.
  albums = collection({
    models: [
      {
        "id": "chmzq50np0002gfixtr1qp64o",
        "name": "Settle",
        "artist": "Disclosure",
        "artistId": "chmzq4l480001gfixe8a3nzhm",
        "coverImage": "/covers/medium/zrms5gxr.jpg",
        "year": "2013",
        "genres": [
          "electronic", "house", "garage", "UK garage",
          "future garage"
        ]
      }
    ],

    // They also take some config....
    config: {
      title: 'Albums',
      description: 'Some great albums you should ' +
        'listen to.',
      class: ['album']      
    }
  });

app.use( bodyParser.json() );
app.use( bodyParser.urlencoded({extended: true}) );
app.use( methodOverride() );
// app.use( log.requestLogger() );

// Once you're ready, hook up your RESTful
// routes by passing your collection into
// the resource() function.
resource('/albums', app, albums);

// Create the server
server = http.createServer(app);


server.listen(port, function () {
  console.log('Listening on port ' + port);
});

Here's what the output looks like:

{
  "title": "Albums",
  "properties": {
    "description": "Some great albums you should listen to.",
    "entityCount": 1
  },
  "entities": [
    {
      "id": "chmzq50np0002gfixtr1qp64o",
      "name": "Settle",
      "artist": "Disclosure",
      "artistId": "chmzq4l480001gfixe8a3nzhm",
      "coverImage": "/covers/medium/zrms5gxr.jpg",
      "year": "2013",
      "genres": [
        "electronic",
        "house",
        "garage",
        "UK garage",
        "future garage"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "entityAttributes": {
    "rel": [
      "item"
    ],
    "class": [
      "album"
    ]
  },
  "links": [
    {
      "rel": [
        "self"
      ],
      "href": "/albums"
    }
  ]
}

Error messaging

404 and 401 error handling routes get hooked up for you for unsupported methods and urls.

Paging

Pass paging rules in on the options, and it will automatically create prev / next links that look like. Those links work automatically, too:

/resource?offset=20&limit=10

Credits

Copyright (c) Eric Elliott 2013

Written for the book, "Programming JavaScript Applications" (O'Reilly)