talkative/railway-routes

Routing for Express (rails2-like)

Description

This is simple routing for ExpressJS framework. It allows you to write resourceful routes.

Using with Express

After creating app instead of writing code like app.get('smth', doSmth); generate routes like that:

var map = new require('railway-routes').Map(app, handler);
map.resources('posts');
map.namespace('admin', function (admin) {
   admin.resources('users');
});

In this example handler function will called immediately for each route, accepting three args: ns, controller, action and should return method which will me actually called to server request.

For example you have two controllers: posts and admin/users which looks like regular modules:

controllers/posts_controller.js

exports.show = function (req, res) {
    res.send('show');
};

exports.edit = function (req, res) {
    res.send('edit');
};

exports.destroy = function (req, res) {
    res.send('destroy');
};

...

same for controllers/admin/users_controller.js

In that case your handler should be:

function handler(ns, controller, action) {
    try {
        var ctlFile = './controllers/' + ns + controller + '_controller';
        var responseHandler =  require(ctlFile)[action];
    } catch(e) {}
    return responseHandler || function (req, res) {
        res.send('Handler not found for ' + ns + controller + '#' + action);
    };
}

Features

• resourceful routes
• generic routes
• url helpers
• namespaces
• custom helper names / paths for resources
• named parameters in url helpers

Docs

http://compoundjs.com/docs/#routing

Named route params

Example:

map.get('/test/:param1/:param2', 'controller#action');
map.pathTo.test({param1: 'foo', param2: 'bar'}); // '/test/foo/bar'

Singleton resources

Example:

map.resource('account');

Will generate the following routes:

GET     /account        account#show
POST    /account        account#create
GET     /account/new    account#new
GET     /account/edit   account#edit
DELETE  /account        account#destroy
PUT     /account        account#update

Singleton resources can also have nested resources. For example:

map.resource('account', function(account) {
  account.resources('posts');
});

Example app

Check out example app to deal with middleware, route handling, and generic routes:

git clone git://github.com/anatoliychakkaev/railway-routes-example-app.git
cd railway-routes-example-app
npm install
node app.js