Question

I’ve seen examples of Restify where all the endpoints are located on the root: /users, /data, etc. I know it’s possible to implement nesting like so:

server.get('/users/:user/data/:id', returnData);

and the req.params variable will have all of the request parameters. Example:

{ user: '45', id: '80' }

This seems to work fine if my application has few endpoints, but what if I have a deep and branched data structure that I want to expose through a REST API? Something like:

{
  stuff: {
    points: {
      colors: {
        shinyThings: {},
        dullThings: {}
      }
    },
    ships: {
      enterprises: {},
      starDestroyers: {}
    }
  },
  things: {},
}

Having to write the paths to all of these endpoints by hand just doesn’t seem right. I end up with lots of path definitions and stuff like this:

server.put('/stuff/:stuff/points/:points/colors/:colors/shinyThings/:shinyThings', returnShinyThing);

Is there an easier way to do this with Restify?

Answer 1

I’ve come up with a way to do it, although I’m sure there are better alternatives:

1) Create modules to handle certain actions on endpoints. These modules will be required into a central router module. Example stuff.js:

exports.list = function(req, res, next) {
  // Code to handle a GET request to /stuff
};

exports.create = function(req, res, next) {
  // Code to handle a POST request to /stuff
};

exports.show = function(req, res, next) {
  // Code to handle a GET request to /stuff/:id
};

exports.update = function(req, res, next) {
  // Code to handle a PUT request to /stuff/:id
};

exports.destroy = function(req, res, next) {
  // Code to handle a DELETE request to /stuff/:id
};

2) In the router module define a mapping of actions -> http verbs:

var actions = {
  list: 'get',
  create: 'post',
  show: 'get',
  update: 'put',
  destroy: 'del'
}

3) Create an object representing the data structure like this:

var schema = {
  stuff: {
    _actions: require('./stuff'),
    points: {
      _actions: require('./points'),
      colors: {
        _actions: require('./colors'),
        shinyThings: {_actions: require('./shinyThings')},
        dullThings: {_actions: require('./dullThings')}
      }
    },
    ships: {
      _actions: require('./ships'),
      enterprises: {_actions: require('./enterprises')},
      starDestroyers: {_actions: require('./starDestroyers')}
    }
  },
  things: {_actions: require('./things')},
}

4) During the router initialization the application passes it a Restify server object to attach the routes to. During initialization a recursive function walks the schema object and when a _actions key is found it calls a second function that attaches the route handlers at the given path to the given server object:

(function addPathHandlers(object, path) {
  for (var key in object) {
    if (key === '_actions') addActions(object, path);
    else if (typeof object[key] === 'object') {
      var single = en.singularize(path.split('/').pop());

      if (path.charAt(path.length - 1) !== '/') {
        path += ['/:', single, '_id/'].join('');
      }

      addPathHandlers(object[key], path + key);
    }
  }
})(schema, '/');

function addActions(object, path) {
  // Actions that require a specific resource id
  var individualActions = ['show', 'update', 'destroy']; 

  for (var action in object._actions) {
    var verb = actions[action];

    if (verb) {
      var reqPath = path;
      if (individualActions.indexOf(action) !== -1) reqPath += '/:id';

      server[verb](reqPath, object._actions[action]);
    }
  }
}

Notes: This makes use of the lingo module (i.e. the en.singularize() function). It’s also a bit simplified since I removed non-critical parts of the functions, but it should be fully functional as it is.

The inspiration for this came after looking at the way express-resource does it, although it’s not as refined and simple to use.