Be able to create custom routes

[ekryski]

I would like to be able to specify what mime types are supported via rest:

app.use('/users', UserService, {
  json: true
});

// which might result in /users.json and /users/1.json being the routes

and also create namespaced routes:

app.use('/users', UserService, {
  json: true,
  prefix: 'api'
});

// which might result in /api/users.json and /api/users/1.json being the routes

Similar idea to #86 but I don't think using the .setup() method is elegant or efficient.

[daffl]

I'm not sure the prefix is necessary. Why couldn't you just do

app.use('/api/users', UserService);

Or create a separate app and use it on a different route (as done with the new Testee):

var api = feathers().use('/users', UserService);

// Map that app to /api (will provide /api/users)
var app = feathers().use('/api', api);

As for the content type, Express does allow REST content negotiation, for Feathers like:

app.configure(feathers.rest(function restFormatter(req, res) {
  res.format({
    'text/plain': function() {
      res.end('The todo is: ' + res.data.description);
    },
    'application/json': function() {
      res.json(res.data);
    }
  });
}));

I don't think you can use file name extensions this way but setting the Accept HTTP header should be possible with every client.

[ekryski]

Or create a separate app and use it on a different route (as done with the new Testee):

Very clever Dave 😉. Totally didn't think of that one.

As for content negotiation say I want to render out a specific template. For example I hit the /users endpoint and I want to render out the 'users' template for html. When I tried that I actually didn't have access to the request object and therefore wasn't able to determine the path.

[daffl]

I would keep that separate from the service though. In the negotiator it would be

app.configure(feathers.rest(function restFormatter(req, res) {
  res.format({
    'text/html': function() {
      var template = req.url;
      res.render('/views/' + template, res.data);
    },

    'application/json': function() {
      res.json(res.data);
    }
  });
}));

The view information could also be added with a custom middleware:

app.use('/users', function(req, res, next) {
  req.view = 'views/user.jade';
  next();
}, UserService);

[ekryski]

Yep that works pretty well and what I had tried. For some reason my req.path is not right so I need to grab req.route.path.

Regardless, the solution is good but it gets complicated when you have urls like /users/:id and you want to res.render('user', {data: res.data}). Possibly namespacing your feathers routes and declaring your own html route handlers might be the best solution for separating JSON/XML routes from HTML ones.

Otherwise you end up writing some janky logic to determine which template should be rendered based on the route path. This could get really complicated if you have stuff like /users/:id/subscriptions, as an example.

[agonbina]

@daffl In the case where you have

var api = feathers().use('/users', UserService);
var app = feathers().use('/api', api);

do configurations from app apply to the api instance too?
Ex. if I have

app.configure(feathers.rest())
.use(bodyParser.json())
.use(...other feather instances ...)

, do we still need to do the same for api or since we have applied those configs before 'mounting' api they would apply to it as well?

Thanks!

[daffl]

I don't think so. Every Express application has its individual middleware stack. The easiest way is probably to put common middleware into a separate setup function and .configure it on each application:

function setup() {
  var app = this;

  app.configure(feathers.rest())
    .use(bodyParser.json())
}

app.configure(setup);
api.configure(setup);

[agonbina]

Yep, just tried leaving out configuration for the api and it no longer works as expected, so definitely each instance has its own middleware stack.

Thanks for the quick response!

[daffl]

I think we can close this issue? If there is still things to think about I'd put them in a new one. I worked with a Feathers app that had some static pages and didn't run into any hard problems connecting services and rendering static pages.

[lock]

This issue has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue with a link to this issue for related bugs.