Router / Route Prefixing

[crookse]

Discussed in https://github.com/drashland/drash/discussions/539

^{Originally posted by vosmith September 16, 2021}
I happened to come across this project trying to figure out what Deno was and ended up finding Drash as one of the top web frameworks for Deno. I like the simplicity of the current API, but I was wondering if this project was interested in having some deeper support for request routing. Mainly, being able to mount a Resource, and its routes behind a prefix, or establishing a parent-child relationship between Resources. I felt that both of these could be accomplished with a Router or something similar.

Here is a little better of an explanation. If I had 10 routes that all had a similar prefix like /api/users, /api/tasks, etc. I would probably have a UsersResource, TasksResource, etc. If I ever wanted to change the api prefix to api/v1, I would need to update each file and fix the path. However, if I could move that prefix up a level, and declare my resources in a Router that has some parent path then I would only update the Router. Something like:

export interface Router {
  name: string;
  paths: string[];
  resources: Drash.Interfaces.Resource[];
}

Similarly, updating the Resource and ServerConfigs interface to include routers: Drash.Interface.Router[]?

Again, I haven't had much experience with this framework and I don't really know how far the community is planning to take this project, but I thought I'd ask the question.

[Guergeiro]

Hum, we really don't have a way of "aggregate" endpoints, right?

[crookse]

we don't and i don't even know how we'd put that in without bloating the code just to support a router. any thoughts @Guergeiro @ebebbington ? only way i can think of is pretty much going with the proposed approach in the discussion

[ebebbington]

i dont think we should go naming something a Router because i think it'll just get confusing - it isnt really a router, the server/resources are the 'routers', the 'router' in this context is just a way to prefix multiple resources intto a group

i've played around with it and came up with

const server = new Server({
  resources: [
    {
        prefix: "/api/v1",
        resources: [Res],
    }
  ],
  protocol: "http",
  hostname: "localhost",
  services: [new CORSService({origin: 'google.com'})],
  port: 3000,
});

Still toying with the idea, but another option could be like

new Server({
  resources: [...],
  prefixes: [
    {
      prefix: "/api/v1",
      resources: [HomeResource]
    }
  ]
})

Then when we create the resources and the url pattern, we do something like

this.#options.forEach(resourceClass => {
  const prefixObj = this.#options.prefixes.find(p => p.resources.includes(resourceClass)) // <-- new code
  let prefix= "" // <-- new code
  if (prefixObj) prefix = prefixObj.prefix // <-- new code
  const resource = new resourceClass();
  const patterns: URLPattern[] = [];
  resource.paths.forEach((path) => {
    // Add "{/}?" to match possible trailing slashes too
    patterns.push(new URLPattern({ pathname: prefix + path + "{/}?" })); // <-- added "prefix" part
  });
})

[Guergeiro]

There's only two ways I think would work without changing a lot of stuff.

1. The way @ebebbington presented.
2. Using TS decorators at class level to change the uri to contain the prefix (uhh, we just removed tsconfig...).

[crookse]

i like ed's first way. that's clean.

[Guergeiro]

And the first approach of @ebebbington seems better. And would also add a global level prefix.

[ebebbington]

first approach is hackier tho lol (to impl it internally)

[Guergeiro]

I get it... Is there a way of implementing a decorator pattern so that we don't change the logic of implementation? @crookse @ebebbington

[crookse]

@ebebbington remember when i had the setUp method in Drash.Service? we could still introduce that and use a RouterService to rearrange the resources on setUp

[ebebbington]

made a pr for documenting this on how a user can do it, as opposed to us writing the code: drashland/website-v2#47

@crookse do you know if we can contact the person that created the discussion?

[crookse]

made a pr for documenting this on how a user can do it, as opposed to us writing the code: drashland/website-v2#47

@crookse do you know if we can contact the person that created the discussion?

yea. replying now.

[crookse]

hey @vosmith! we looked into this and there's actually nothing to implement since drash can be extended. here's an example of how to implement path prefixing:

https://drash.land/drash/v2.x/tutorials/resources/prefixing-paths