Uberquery

About

Uberquery supercharges your mongoose queries with the request query-parameters allowing you to directly limt select, offset, filter or populate your mongoose query from the request.

Tired of always passing in limit and offset parameters from the request into your query? Do you build a search functionality for single entity? Well, charge your query with most native filters like aforementioned limit and offset or testing equals or gte directly from the requested url.

remark I hear you, what about performance, or what about security? If anyone can query my database from the ease of typing in an url with some parameters, where is my security?

Well, Uberquery is not secure, just as much as it includes caching. But then again, Uberquery was not made to be a unicorn. There are many modules available helping you with caching and authentication. Use those to block of unwanted use of your endpoints.

Usage

Install Uberquery via npm:

npm install --save uberquery

Initialize it into your application and pass in your mongoose, on which you registered your models

var Uberquery = require('uberquery');
Uberquery.init(mongoose);

You are done. That is all you need to do to start using Uberquery.

Now you can start querying.

// start a new query
// feed it the request object.
// feed it the name of the mongoose model you want to query.
var query = Uberquery.query(req, 'User');

You feed Uberquery the request object so it can generate a query based on the request paramters it finds. The name of the entity you pass as second parameter should be the same name as your mongoose model.

Manipulating the query afterwards

The query you recieve from Uberquery is a regular mongoose query. so you can manipulate it as you seem fit.

var query = Uberquery.query(req, 'User');
query.populate('relatives');

Executing the query to recieve results

Manually

var query = Uberquery.query(req, 'User');
query.exec(function afterQueryExecution(err, list) {
    if(err) {
        // handle error
    }
    res.json(list); // send the resultset to the client
});

Using Uberquery's handlers

var query = Uberquery.query(req, 'User');
Uberquery.handlers.get(req, res, next);

Querystring filters picked up by Uberquery

Available Filters

Primary Filters

select usage: ?select=property1[ property2][ property3]
Do you only need a few properties? you can filter the return value with only the propertys you need by passing their names into the select filter.

limit usage: ?limit=number
Want only 5 items? just use ?limit=5.

skip usage: ?skip=number
Skipping the first 5 items? just use ?skip=5.

sort usage: ?sort=property1[ property2]
Sorting your resultset on a certain property can be done just like mongoose accepts string sorts. Sort order can thus be passed via a - in front of the propertyname. (e.g. ?sort=-propertyname).

more information what sorting is accepted by mongoose can be found here. note you can add sorting to the Uberquery in your backend nodeJS handler any time but use the string equivalent if you are passing it in through the url parameters.

Secondary Filters

You can of course also filter on your own entities properties. Supose you have a User entity with a name, email, age and gender. You could easily filter on it using one of the following queries:

?name=sander
?age__lte=30
?gender__ne=male
...

note searching on strings like name=sander is treated case sensitive.

A list of all operations possible can be found here: note all examples work further on the usecase of having a /users route which handles the request through an Uberquery.

Filter	Query	Example	Description
equal	equals	/users?gender=male or /users?gender__equals=male	both return all male users (case sensitive when searching a string property)
not equal	ne	/users?gender__ne=male	returns all users who are not male (female or not set)
greater than	gt	/users?age__gt=18	returns all users older than 18
greater than or equal to	gte	/users?age__gte=18	returns all users 18 and older
lower than	lt	/users?age__lt=30	returns all users age 29 and younger
lower than or equal to	lte	/users?age__lte=30	returns all users age 30 and younger
in	in	/users?gender__in=female,male	returns all female and male users and will leave out users where gender is not set, or an other value than male or female
Regex	regex	/users?username__regex=/^saelfaer/i	returns all users with a username starting with saelfaer (case sensitive)

Available Alterables

poulate usage: ?populate=property1[ property2][ propeprty3]
Populating a referenced property. You can populate more than 1 property by joining your propertynames with a space.

Changelog

v0.1.5

• Fix small bug with empty payload

v0.1.4

• Rework get handler returning the result as is
• Add getOne handler returning the first item if result is a list, or the entire object

v0.1.3

• cleanup of unused dependencies
• fixed package.json incorrectly stating ICS as license

v0.1.2 initial release

• create queries
• filter using the querystring
• manipulate them afterwards
• execute them and send the result to the client via built in handlers

Remarks Or Issues

Got a remark or issue? I'm open to improvements so post your remarks in the issues

credits

The idea for this project sprung when I was using node-restful and wanted to use his ease of filtering on a custom route not falling in his restful way of working. I created this project from scratch but can't say some of the code isn't heavily influenced by the way node-restful works.

License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014 by Sander Houttekier

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.