restLib

Note this project is only intended for personal projects

restLib is a simplistic API framework, built on top of expressJS. It is intended to help aid in the setup of RESTful APIs in a structured way. It is ismilar in concept to frameworks such as Loopback, however, is entended to be far less combersome.

Installation

1. Clone this repository
2. run npm ci

Usage

restLib generates RESTful endpoints based on model descriptions. It also allows for custom controllers.

Creating Models

To add a new RESTful model, add a new file with the extention model.js into the models directory. This file will export a model description.

Sample

module.exports = {
  provider: "mongodb",
  schema: {
    _id: {
      type: "mongoid",
      primary: true,
      required: true,
    },
    name: {
      type: "string",
      required: false,
    },
  },
};

Provider

Every model description needs to define what database provider to use to store and retrieve the data.

Available Providers

• mongodb

Schema

Every model description needs to define a schema. Each schema entry equates to one column in a database table.

Schema Options

type defines the datatype for the schema key

name	description
mongoid	MongoDB UUID
string	Basic string (varchar)

primary is a boolean value (defaults to false) which deternines if the key should be treated as a primary key

required is a boolean value (defaults to false) which determines if the key is required to be set on RESTful create and update opperations.

Creating Controllers

Controllers can be added to augment the RESTful endpoints with custom logic. Models are NOT required to have a controller. To create a controller add a file with the extension .controler.js to the controllers directory.

Sample

module.exports = {
  auth: (request, response, next) => {
    next(request, response);
  },
  deleteMany: {
    skip: true,
    fn: (request, response, results) => {
      response.send(405);
    },
  },
  endpoints: [
    {
      path: "and/stuff",
      method: "get",
      fn: (request, response) => {
        response.send("Custom!!!");
      },
    },
  ],
};

auth

Every controller can have a custom auth middleware which will be applied to every RESTful request on the model.

Override endoints

Every controller can accept an override object for each RESTful endpoint.

skip is a boolean value (default false) that disables the default CRUD opperation of the endpoint

fn is a function that will be ran after the default CRUD operation has completed (unless skipped)

Available Override Endpoints

• get
• getAll
• put
• putAll
• delete
• deleteMany

endpoints

Every controller can have a number of custom endpoints. These are provided as an array of endpoint objects

Endpoint options

path is a string path to append to the model's default path (/{modelname}/{path}). This path conforms to Express' path format.

method is the HTTP method the endpoint will listen on.

fn is the express function the endpoint will use.

Default RESTful Endpoints

• get (GET:/model/:id)
• getAll (GET:/model/)
• put (PUT:/model/:id)
• putAll (PUT:/model/)
• delete (DELETE:/model/:id)
• deleteMany (DELETE:/model/)