express-dry-router


An express router for people who hate repeating themselves.

If we consider a typical route in an express app:

// app.js
var routes = require('./app/routes');

app.get('/admin/login', routes.admin.login);

// routes/index.js
exports.admin = {
login: function (req, res) {
res.render('login', { pageTitle: 'Login'});
};

The name of the route is repeated three times - twice in app.js (``/admin/login` and `routes.admin.login`) and as part of the object hirearchy in in routes/index.js

Expess-dry-router allows you to describe routes with a single source of truth, the object hierarchy. The above example could be re-written like this:

// app.js
var routes = require('./app/routes');
var configureDryRoutes = require('express-dry-router');

configureDryRoutes(routes, app);

// routes/index.js
module.exports = {
admin: {
login: {
get: function (req, res) {
res.render('login', { title: 'Login'});
}
}
}
};

Example

This example demonstrates setting up routes with GET, PUT, POST and DELETE HTTP methods.


var express = require('express');
var http = require('http');
var configureDryRoutes = require('express-dry-router');

var app = express();

// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
app.use(app.router);

var routes = {
myapp: {
resources: {
":id": {
get: function (req, res) {
res.send("Retrieve a representation of " + req.params.id);
},
put: function (req, res) {
res.send("Replace " + req.params.id + ", or if it doesn't exist, create it.");
},
post: function (req, res) {
res.send("Not generally used.");
},
delete: function (req, res) {
res.send("Delete " + req.params.id);
}
},
get: function (req, res) {
res.send("List the URIs and perhaps other details of the collection's members.");
},
put: function (req, res) {
res.send("Replace the entire collection with another collection.");
},
post: function (req, res) {
res.send("Create a new entry in the collection. The new entry's URI is assigned automatically and is usually returned by the operation.");
},
delete: function (req, res) {
res.send("Delete the entire collection.");
}
}
}
};
configureDryRoutes(routes, app);

http.createServer(app).listen(app.get('port'), function(){
console.log('Express server listening on port ' + app.get('port'));
});

Opening http://localhost:3000/myapp/resources in a browser will cause a HTTP GET request to be sent to the server. The handler defined in `rotues.myapp.resources.get` will be called and "List the URIs and perhaps other details of the collection's members." will be returned in the HTTP response to the browser.

Opening http://localhost:3000/myapp/resources/item1 in a browser will cause a HTTP GET request to being sent to the server. The handler defined in `rotues.myapp.resources.":id".get` will be called and "Retrieve a representation of item1" will be returned in the HTTP response to the browser.

Creating a HTTP request with one of the other HTTP methods (PUT, POST and DELETE) will cause the corresponding handlers in the `rotues`` object hierarchy to be called. This can be tested using the Dev HTTP Client in Chrome, for example.