expressways

A simple but automagic way of creating express routers and route methods.

expressways allows you to dynamically create Express routes, specifically useful when creating API"s and you are organizing your code in multiple files.

Requirements

expressways has been tested with Express 4.17

Installation

Install expressways to your solution by using:

npm install expressways --save

Features

expressways has the following feature.

Define your route methods using way()

Each method you want to expose through your expressways route is exported and declared using the way().

You can export multiple or individual methods per file.

import { way } from "expressways";
 
export const get1 = way("get", "/", (req, res, next) => {
    res.send("Foo");
});

Strongly typed paths using way<>

You can use strongly typed parameters, request bodies, response bodies and query string objects using a templated way approach.

The following example specifies strongly typed arguments that allows you to have strict type checking while writing your code, to minimize errors.

export const postMethod2 = way<{ param: string }, { data: string }, { result: string }, { query: string }>("post", "/:param", (req, res, next) => {
    res.send({ result: req.body.data });
});
 

The arguments to the way<Params, ReqBody, ResBody, Query, Method>(method, name, handler) method are as follows:

Argument	Description
Params	Defines the path parameters to be used - each object int Params must have a corresponding variable in the name property
ReqBody	Defines the structure of the request body
ResBody	Defines the structure of the response body
Query	Defines the query string parameters

Use expressways() to create a dynamic Express router

To add the defined methods to an Express router you use the expressways() automagic router as follows.

import express from "express";
import { expressways } from "expressways";
 
const app = express();
 
app.use("/test", expressways({
    ways: require("./routes")
}));

expressways options

The following options are available for expressways Router generation

Option	Required	Description
ways	yes	A require, import or an object of the route methods
handlers	no	An array of additional Express request handlers
router	no	An existing Express Router to use, instead of creating a new one
log	no	Method for logging, for instance use console.log or debug

Sample application

File: ways.ts

import { way } from "expressways";
 
export const get1 = way("get", "/", (req, res, next) => {
    res.send("Foo");
});
 
export const get2 = way("get", "/two", async (req, res, next) => {
    res.send("Fie");
});

File: index.ts

import express from "express"
import { expressways } from "expressways";
const app = express();
const port = 3000
 
app.get("/", (req, res) => res.send("Hello World!"))
 
app.use("/test", expressways({
    ways: require("./ways")
}));
 
import("./ways").then( routes => {
    app.use("/test2", expressways({
        ways: routes,
        handlers: [
            (req, res, next) => {
                res.setHeader("X-expressways", "true"),
                next();
            }
        ]
    }));
});
 
app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example app listening at http://localhost:${port}`))

A full example is also available at https://github.com/wictorwilen/expressways-sample/

About

expressways is created and maintained by Wictor Wilen

License

MIT