connect-controller

connect-controller allows you to create Plain Controller Objects with NO express boilerplate code. Plain Controller Objects do not require any additional configuration, nor annotations, nor a specific base class, nor req, res or next arguments, etc. The connect-controller suppresses all the express web server verbosity from a web controller, such as: router.get(...); paths specification e.g. /path/subPath/:routeParam; arguments lookup on res.params; rendering views res.render(<viewPath>, <context>); specifying views paths; etc.

For instance, given a domain service footballDb with a promises based API, compare the two approaches of building a football router with, and without connect-controller, in listing 1 and listing 2 respectively. Both cases build and bind a single route to the path /leagues/:id/table which uses the getLeaguesIdTable(id) method of footballDb. (NOTE that connect-controller is also able to parse methods conforming to the node.js callback convention)

Listing 1 - Build and bind an express route with connect-controller ( example/lib/controllers/footasync.js ):

const connectCtr = require('connect-controller')
const getLeaguesIdTable = footballDb.getLeaguesIdTable
const controller = { getLeaguesIdTable }
app.use('footasync', connectCtr(controller))

Listing 2 - Build and bind an express route ( example/lib/routes/football.js ):

const router = express.Router()
router.get('/leagues/:id/table', (req, res, next) => {
    const id = req.params.id
    footballDb
      .getLeaguesIdTable(id)
      .then(league => {
        res.render('football/leagues/table', league)
      })
      .catch(err => next(err))
})
app.use('football', router)

Note that in former example, the connect-controller overwhelms all verbosity:

1. NO need of router.get(...). Methods bind to http GET, by default. For different verbs just prefix <verb>_to method's name.
2. NO path definition /leagues/:id/table. Router paths are mapped to methods names.
3. NO need of req, res, next arguments.
4. NO arguments lookup, such as req.params.id. Just add id as a method parameter.
5. NO explicit renderization. res.render(...) is implicit.
6. NO view path specification. By default, the view path is /controllerName/actionName.
7. NO error handler.

The connect-controller builds a connect/express Middleware from a Plain Controller Object. By default, every controller method (Action) is mapped to a route with the path /controllerName/actionName, following the server-side controller conventions (according to the Controller definition of Rails)

Put it simply, for each action method:

• the connect-controller searches for a matching argument in req.params;
• to bind action parameters to route parameters you just need to include the parameters names in the method's name interleaved by _ or different case;
• if you want to handle an HTTP method (i.e. verb) different from GET you just need to prefix the name of the method with verb_;
• the resp.render(viewPath, context) is just a continuation appended to an action method, where:
  • the context is just the method result, or the content of the returned Promise,
  • the viewPath corresponds to controllerName/actionName, which is located inside the views folder by default.
• to take a different response other than res.render(data) you just need to add the res parameter to the action method and do whatever you want. In this case the connect-controller gets out of the way and delegates to the action method the responsibility of sending the response.

There are additional keywords that can be used to parametrize Actions following additional conventions, such as:

• prefix HTTP method, e.g. get_<action name>, post_<action name>, etc;
• req, res and next are reserved parameters names (optional in action arguments list) binding to Middleware req, res and next.
• whenever an action receives the res parameter, the connect-controller gets out of the way and delegates on that action the responsibility of sending the response.
• index reserved method name, which maps to a route corresponding to the Controller's name

Finally you may configure the connect-controller behavior with additional parameters passed in an optional Object to the default function (e.g. connectCtr('./controllers', { redirectOnStringResult: true })). This Object can be parameterized with the following properties:

• name - the name of controller when it is loaded as a single controller instance (default: '').
• redirectOnStringResult - set this property to true when an action method returns a string as the path to redirect (default: false).
• resultHandler - (res, ctx) => void function that will handle the result of the action methods, instead of the default res.render(...) behavior.

Installation

$ npm install connnect-controller

Usage

Given for example a controller football.js located in application root /controllers folder you may add all football.js actions as routes of an express app just taking the following steps. In this example we are adding 4 routers: one to render views (the default behavior of connect-controller) for football.js (callback based) and other router forfootasync.js (promise based) and two more routers to serialize the context objects to json. The latter routes with prefix /api. Note that we are using exactly the same controller module to build all router objects. The only difference is in the options object which includes a resultHandler for the latter.

const express = require('express')
const connectCtr = require('connect-controller')
const app = express()
app.use(connectCtr(
  './controllers', // contains football.js and footasync.js
  { redirectOnStringResult: true }
))
app.use('/api', connectCtr(
  './controllers',
  { resultHandler: (res, ctx) => res.json(ctx) }
))
/**
 * Alternatives:
 * app.use(connectCtr())                                      // loads all controllers located in controllers folder
 * app.use(connectCtr(require('./controllers/footasync.js')))  // loads a single controller object
 * app.use(connectCtr(                                        // loads a single controller object with name soccer
 *   require('./controllers/footasync.js'),
 *   { name: 'soccer'} 
 * ))  
 */

In this case footasync.js could be for example:

const footballDb = require('./../db/footballDb')

/**
 * connect-controller supports action methods names in both conventions
 * underscores and lower camel case.
 * In this sample we are using underscores, but it will work too if you replace
 * underscores by different case.
 */
module.exports = {
    leagues_id_table, // binds to /footasync/leagues/:id/table
    leagues,          // binds to /footasync/leagues
    index,            // binds to /footasync/
    index_id          // binds to /footasync/:id
}

/**
 * Every action parameter (e.g. id) taking part of method's name (e.g. _id_)
 * is bound to the corresponding argument of req.params (e.g. req.params.id).
 * In this case this function is useless and we could simply bound 
 * property 'leagues_id_table' to method footballDb.leagueTable.
 */
function leagues_id_table(id){
    return footballDb.getLeaguesIdTable(id)
}

/**
 * Every action parameter (e.g. name) that is NOT part of the method's name
 * will be searched on req.query, req.body, req, res.locals and req.app.locals.
 */
function leagues(name) {
    return footballDb
        .getLeagues()
        .then(leagues => leagues
            .filter(l => !name || l.caption.indexOf(name) >= 0)
}

/**
 * Whenever an action receives the `res` parameter, the connect-controller
 * gets out of the way and delegates on that action the responsibility of
 * sending the response.
 * So whenever you want to do something different from the default behavior 
 * you just have to append res to your parameters.
 */
function index(res) {
    /**
     * Once this controller is loaded with an options object set with
     * the property `redirectOnStringResult` then this is equivalent
     * to removing the `res` parameter and just return the destination
     * string path '/footasync/leagues'.
     */
    res.redirect('/footasync/leagues')
}

/**
 * If this controller is loaded with an options object set with the property 
 * `redirectOnStringResult` then this action method redirects to 
 * `/footasync/leagues/:id/table`.
 */
function index_id(id) {
    return '/footasync/leagues/' + id + '/table'
}

Changelog

2.0.1 (May 18, 2017)

Add support for Plain Controller Objects with methods conforming to node.js callback convention. Remove the automatic binding of action arguments to the properties of req, req.query, req.body, res.locals, app.locals. Now you have to receive a req or res and look for desired properties.

1.3.0 (February 8, 2017)

• connectCtr function may me configured with an additional options Object with the following optional properties:
  • name - the name of controller when it is loading a single controller instance.
  • redirectOnStringResult - set this property to true when an action method returns a string as the path to redirect.
  • resultHandler - (res, ctx) => void function that will handle the result of the action methods, instead of the default res.render(...) behavior.

1.2.0 (January 13, 2017)

• Action methods (i.e. methods of a controller instance) can be defined in lowerCamelCase and not only with underscores. The connect-controller automatically bind action methods in one of those formats: lowerCamelCase or underscores.

License

MIT