url-sweatshirt

Wrap your URLs in a warm layer of helper functions.

Projects like JsRoutes are great when your JavaScript is tightly integrated with a Rails backend. However, if you want to reduce coupling between your frontend and backend code, you're going to need to manage your routes manually. url-sweatshirt eases that transition by generating Rails-like URL helpers for you.

var generate = require('url-sweatshirt').generate;
var userPostUrl = generate('/users/:userId/posts/:id');
 
// all return '/users/1/posts/2'
userPostUrl(1, 2));
userPostUrl(1, { id: 2 });
userPostUrl({ userId: 1, id: 2 });
 
// returns '/users/1/posts/2?q=javascript'
userPostUrl(1, 2, { q: 'javascript' });
 
// returns '/users/1/posts/2?q=javascript&foo=bar'
userPostUrl(1, 2, { q: 'javascript' }, { foo: 'bar' });

Defaults

When you define a URL, you can pass in defaults for both path parameters and query parameters.

var categoryUrl = generate('/categories/:name', { name: 'all', locale: 'en' });
 
// returns '/categories/all?locale=en'
categoryUrl();

Callers can then override the defaults. They can also remove a default query parameter by passing null.

// returns '/categories/books'
categoryUrl('books', { locale: null });

Special parameters

_anchor, _host, and _protocol are special:

var fancyUrl = generate('/', {
  _host: 'www.example.com',
  _protocol: 'https'
});
 
// returns 'https://www.example.com/#post-5'
fancyUrl({ _anchor: 'post-5' });

If you provide _host but not _protocol, you'll get a protocol-relative URL (i.e., one starting with //).

Shared defaults

If you need to define a bunch of helpers with shared default parameters, you can use the withDefaults function. It takes a callback and passes in a version of generate with the given defaults baked in.

var withDefaults = require('url-sweatshirt').withDefaults;
var urls = {};
 
withDefaults({ _host: 'api.example.com' }, function(generate) {
  urls.userUrl = generate('/users/:id');
});
 
// returns '//api.example.com/users/1'
urls.userUrl(1);

Using a fancier query encoder

By default, the query string is built using a simple function that calls toString() on param values and then URI-encodes the param keys and values. For some use cases, it's helpful to use alternate strategies for this -- for example, you might want to use jQuery's $.param to convert objects and arrays into Rails-style bracket notation. You can accomplish this by calling the function exported from the url-sweatshirt module and passing in a function with the appropriate signature (takes a single object param and returns a string).

var simpleGenerate = require('url-sweatshirt').generate;
var simpleHomeUrl = simpleGenerate('/');
 
var complexGenerate = require('url-sweatshirt')($.param).generate;
var complexHomeUrl = complexGenerate('/');
 
// returns '/?a=1&b=[object%20Object]'
simpleHomeUrl({ a: 1, b: { c: 2, d: 3 }});
 
// returns '/?a=1&b[c]=2&b[d]=3`
complexHomeUrl({ a: 1, b: { c: 2, d: 3 }});

Features that aren't supported yet

• Optional and splat params.
• Lots of other features that we didn't need yet. Pull requests welcome!