Chaining [Discussion]

[djensen47]

Like Express, Restify allows chaining on path definitions. It would be great if I could pass a chain of callback functions to the quick mapping.

The use case I have in mind is checking authorization on requests.

I use a plugin handler to do the initial authentication handling. Since not all APIs need to be protected, I have a callback function that I use to "protect" a particular path. The path ends up looking like this.

  var opts = {
    filter: function userFilter(req, res) {
      return {user: req.user.userId};
    }
  }

  var notes = restifyMongoose(Rule, opts);
  server.get('/notes/:id', authenticate, notes.detail());
  server.get('/rules', authenticate, rules.query());

I would prefer to do something like this:

restifyMongoose(models.Note, opts, authenticate, f1, f2, f3).serve('/notes', server);

Just like Restify allows, the constructor would allow you to pass or "chain" as many functions as you need.

Thoughts?

[saintedlama]

I like the idea to make serve more flexible. The API looks a little awkward since these route middleware is only applied when using serve something like

restifyMongoose(models.Note, opts, authenticate, f1, f2, f3).serve('/notes', [authenticate, f1, f2, f3], [after1,after2, after3], server);

would fit better

[djensen47]

I think you had a copy and paste error. Did you mean …

restifyMongoose(models.Note, opts).serve('/notes', [authenticate, f1, f2, f3], [after1,after2, after3], server);

I think I would put server after the path since it is required.

var notes = restifyMongoose(models.Note, opts);
notes.serve('/notes', server, [authenticate, f1, f2, f3], [after1,after2, after3]);

If you want to chain handlers before and after this function signature isn't going to work. Maybe something like this:

var notes = restifyMongoose(models.Note, opts);
var handlerChain = {
  before: [Function],
  after: [Funtion],
};
notes.serve('/notes', server, handlerChain);

Thoughts?

[saintedlama]

Looks good. When we now call that options we have a nice extension point for server

var notes = restifyMongoose(models.Note, opts);
var options = {
  before: [Function],
  after: [Funtion],
};
notes.serve('/notes', server, options);

[djensen47]

Okay, I've implemented this in my pull request.