RESTponse

A simple library that makes it extremely simple to streamline API responses.

---

Install the package with

npm i -s restponse

or use it with Yarn

yarn add restponse

This package has 0 dependencies (excluding devDependencies used for testing and coverage), and leverages the built in Node JS http module to provide status codes. Refer to said module to see what status codes you can include in your app.

Usage example (with Express):

const Restponse = require('restponse')
const restponse = new Restponse()
 
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send(restponse[200])
})

The endpoint will respond with the following:

{
  "status": "200",
  "reason": "OK"
}

Extending with more options:

To add a new key and value pair to the generated JSON, you can just add it to the config object, which is a parameter of the constructor.

In this example we'll add version and name information:

const restponse = Restponse({
  version: '1.2',
  name: 'MyAPI'
})

The response to the previous request will now be:

{
  "status": "200",
  "reason": "OK",
  "name": "MyAPI",
  "version": "1.2"
}

The type of the value for these can also be a number or a string, which will behave the same way, however if you provide a function, it will take the options object as the parameter and the returned value will be passed into the returned object.

const restponse = new Restponse({
  url: function ({status, version}) {
    return `https://mywebsite.com/api/${version}/status/${status}`
  },
  version: '1.2'
})

The response to this request will now be:

{
  "status": "200",
  "reason": "OK",
  "version": "1.2",
  "url": "https://mywebsite.com/api/1.2/status/200"
}

This feature is particularly useful if you want developers to have quick access to more information about your responses.

Finally if you want to add fields that only apply to specific statuses, you can do so by giving an object that has the specific key for the request.

It is advised to provide at least an empty string to all the status codes.

const restponse = new Restponse({
  message: {
    200: 'This means everything is fine.'
  }
})

Response:

{
  "status": "200",
  "reason": "OK",
  "message": "This means everything is fine."
}

If you want to add objects (like arrays) to your response, you can do so after intialization. To add payload to the response, you can just add it as a property:

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  let response = Object.assign({}, restponse[200])
  response.payload = 'Welcome to index.'
  res.send(response)
})

Contributing

Feel free to add PRs.