🐌 GoSnail

Experimental express.js like HTTP router written in golang. This project was just a demostration to check whether or not we could create "developer friendly" API for http routing.

What does it look like?

Take a look at this sample code..

import (
  "fmt"

  "gosnail"
)

func main() {
  // Router handles incoming requests from Application or another routers
  router := gosnail.NewRouter()

  // Application is wrapper for http.Handler that composes and redirects
  // requests to router
  app := gosnail.NewApplication(router)

  // Simple GET / request handler
  //
  // Arguments:
  //   ctx  - is request context contains request and response details
  //   next - calling this function fill forward request to the next handler
  router.Get("/", func (ctx *gosnail.Context, next func()) {
    fmt.Fprintf(ctx.Response(), "Index page")
  })

  // Middleware that handles all requests (excluding previously handled ones)
  //
  // Middlewares are simple functions that can intercept request and response
  // data and has ability to modifying them.
  //
  // In this example middleware, it simply checks if the request has an header
  // named 'Authorization', if not it simply responds with 401 status code. If
  // there's one, it forwards request to next handler.
  router.Use(gosnail.Any, func (ctx *gosnail.Context, next func()) {
    if ctx.Request().Headers.Get("Authorization") != "" {
      ctx.Response().StatusCode = 401
      ctx.Response().End()
    } else {
      next()
    }
  })

  // Another simple GET /users handler.
  //
  // This handler will get called only if previously registered middleware
  // forwards request to it.
  router.Get("/users", func (ctx *gosnail.Context, next func()) {
    fmt.Fprintf(ctx.Response(), "This is supposed to be user list...")
  })

  // Creates http server that listens for incoming requests to port 8080 and
  // forwards them to the router.
  //
  // This method has same effect as calling http.ListenAndServe(":8080", app)
  app.Listen(":8080")
}

Why?

Because current state of routing libraries in golang is not much friendly for newcomer developers to golang coming from much simplier environments like node.js. Bla blah... To be honest, I was just bored and tried to do something for fun.

It's not likely that I'm going to continue to work on this repository. So please don't use it.

Also if you read this far, I wanna let you know that I hate golang's module / package management system, and that's what frustrated me a lot during making of this package. That's it, thanks for coming to my TED talk.