ndelvalle/generator-api

Switching to restify instead of expressjs

marko-ciric opened this issue · 3 comments

marko-ciric commented

This is a proposition of switching from https://github.com/expressjs/express to https://github.com/restify/node-restify. Some of the reasons are:

  • Since the idea of a generator is to be used presumably for REST API projects, meaning no server-side page rendering, the app could be far lighter by using restify framework.
  • restify is more robust when it comes to error handling (http://restify.com/#error-handling), since it comes with built-in Error objects that are easily mapped to proper http errors.
  • A lot of parsers are also built-in (http://restify.com/#bundled-plugins).
ndelvalle commented

I tough about it, and I decided not to make the change. The main Idea is like you said using this generator for a REST API project, and using restify would be a really good approach. But at this point, having the project nearly finish, I don't think it would be worth. Is not an small change and I'm really satisfied with express performance / community etc.

The 2 possible solutions for using restify instead of express in my opinion would be:

  • Make it optional when generating the project, to allow the user to choose the framework. (In mi humble opinion, most users would choose express)
  • Creating a new generator, same as this one, but using restify

Maybe there is another good option that I'm not seeing, but I wont be implementing on of these right away. I would really like to, at some point tho.

If you have in mind some other options, or would like to help me implement on of the above, let me know 🙂

marko-ciric commented

@ndelvalle I think the first solution is a reasonable one (having an option to choose between different frameworks) as that's what I've seen in other generators. I can work on that option if that's ok with you.

  • 🎉1
ndelvalle commented

@marko-ciric of course that would be great 👍. Let me know if you need help implementing it. And thanks in advance!