watson / root

a lightweight prototypical middleware web framework

root

A super lightweight web framework with routing and prototype mixin support.

It's available through npm:

npm install root

Usage

Usage is simple

var root = require('root');
var app = root();

app.get('/', function(request, response) {
	response.send({hello:'world'});
});

app.post('/echo', function(request, response) {
	request.on('json', function(body) {
		response.send(body);
	});
});

app.listen(8080);

You can extend the request and response with your own methods

app.use('response.time', function() {
	this.send({time:this.request.time});
});
app.use('request.time', {getter:true}, function() {
	return Date.now();
});

app.get(function(request, response) {
	response.time();
});

Routing

Routing is done using murl. Use the get, post, put, del, patch or options method to specify the HTTP method you want to route

app.get('/hello/{world}', function(request, response) {
	response.send({world:request.params.world});
});
app.get('/test', function(request, response, next) {
	// call next to call the next matching route
	next();
});
app.get('/test', function(request, response) {
	response.send('ok');
});

URL normalization

Before routing an incoming url it is first decoded and normalized

• /../../ ⇨ /
• /foo/bar/../baz ⇨ /foo/baz
• /foo%20bar ⇨ /foo bar
• /foo%2fbar ⇨ /foo/bar

This basicly means that you don't need to worry about /.. attacks when serving files or similar.

Error handling

You can specify an error handler for a specific error code by using the error function

app.get('/foo', function(request, response) {
	response.error(400, 'bad request man');
});

app.error(404, function(request, response, opts) {
	// opts contains .message which is the message passed to response.error
	// and .stack if an error was passed
	response.send({error:'could not find route'});
});
app.error(function(request, response, opts) {
	response.send({error:'catch all other errors'});
});

Using sub apps

Route requests through an sub app by using app.route

var mobileApp = root();
var myApp = root();
...
myApp.all('/m/*', function(request, response, next) {
	// all routes starting with /m should route through our mobile app as well
	mobileApp.route(request, response, next);
});

As a shortcut you can just pass the app directly

myApp.all('/m/*', mobileApp);

This allows you to easily split up your application into seperate parts and mount them all on one server

Full API

Response

• response.send(json) will send back json.
• response.send(string) will send back html (if no Content-Type has been set).
• response.error(statusCode, messageOrError) send back an error
• response.redirect(url) send a http redirect

Request

• request.on('json', listener) will buffer and parse the body as JSON.
• request.on('form', listener) will buffer and parse the body as a url encoded form
• request.on('body', listener) will buffer the body as a string
• request.query contains the parsed querystring from the url

App

• app.use(methodName, options, fn) extend the request or response with a new prototype method
• app.(get|put|post|del|options|patch)(pattern, fn) add a route for a http method
• app.all(pattern, fn) route all methods
• app.route(request, response, callback) route a request or response from another app
• app.error(statusCode, fn) add an error handler. use 4xx to match all 400 errors etc.
• app.on('route', listener) emitted everytime a request is being routed

License

MIT