restberry / Restberry

Restberry works with both Express and Restify!

Framework for setting up RESTful JSON APIs with NodeJS. Define your models and setup CRUD API calls without needing to write any code (see Usage). All API calls will handle and identify issues and throw necessary HTTP responses and easy to debug error responses. Restberry also handles authentication and permission checks and throws appropriate errors.

Install

npm install restberry

Example

See example for a detailed documentation of how you setup a Restberry app.

Usage

var restberry = require('restberry');

restberry
    .config({
        apiPath: '/api/v1',
        port: 5000,
    })
    .listen();

restberry.model('Foo')
    .schema({
        name: {type: String},
    })
    .routes
        .addCreateRoute()
        .addReadManyRoute();

restberry.model('Bar')
    .schema({
        foo: {type: restberry.odm.ObjectId, ref: 'Foo'},
        name: {type: String},
    })
    .routes
        .addCRUDRoutes({
            parentModel: 'Foo',
        });

NOTE: By default, Restberry integrates with ExpressJS and Mongoose but it can be hooked up with other packages. See more usages in the tests and dependent packages like:

• restberry-express
• restberry-mongoose
• restberry-restify

Response examples

All these responses below are automatically handled without needing to write any additional code.

• 200 OK

2014-05-11T11:55:53.916Z|172.16.122.129|GET|/api/v1/foos/536f6549e88ad2b5a71ffdc6|<{}>
2014-05-11T11:55:53.920Z|172.16.122.129|200|<{
  "foo": {
    "href": "/api/v1/foos/536f6549e88ad2b5a71ffdc7",
    "id": "536f6549e88ad2b5a71ffdc7",
    "name": "test"
  }
}>

• 201 CREATED

2014-05-11T11:55:54.210Z|172.16.122.129|POST|/api/v1/foos|<{
  "name": "test"
}>
2014-05-11T11:55:54.210Z|172.16.122.129|201|<{
  "foo": {
    "href": "/api/v1/foos/536f654ae88ad2b5a71ffdcb",
    "id": "536f654ae88ad2b5a71ffdcb",
    "name": "test"
  }
}>

• 204 NO CONTENT

2014-05-11T11:55:52.575Z|172.16.122.129|DELETE|/api/v1/foos/536f6548e88ad2b5a71ffdb7|<{}>
2014-05-11T11:55:52.579Z|172.16.122.129|204|

NOTE: See restberry-errors for possible error responses.

Authentication

See restberry-passport.

Routing

restberry.model('Foo')
    .routes
        .addCreateRoute()  // POST /foos
        .addDeleteRoute()  // DELETE /foos/:id
        .addPartialUpdateRoute()  // POST /foos/:id
        .addReadManyRoute()  // GET /foos
        .addReadRoute()  // GET /foos/:id
        .addUpdateRoute()  // PUT /foos/:id
        .addCRUDRoutes()  // All of the above...

Handle action query strings like this:

restberry.model('Foo')
    .routes
        .addPartialUpdateRoutes({
            actions: {
                build: function(req, res, next) {
                    ...
                },  // POST /foos/:id?action=build
            },
        })

And Handle parent models like this:

restberry.model('Foo')
    .routes
        .addCreateRoutes({
            parentModel: restberry.model('Bar'),
        })  // POST /bars/:id/foos

NOTE: this can only be applied to ReadMany and Create.

You can also create custom routes. The possible configurations you can make are:

restberry
    .routes
        .addCustomRoutes({
            action: function(req, res, next) {
                ...
            },
            apiPath: '/api/v1',  // overrides the one set on Restberry
            actions: { },
            loginRequired: false,  // should authenticate the request
            method: 'GET',  // choices: DELETE, GET, POST, PUT
            parentModel: restberry.model('Bar'),
            path: '/path/to',  // the path of the route, will append apiPath
            postAction: function(json, req, res, next) {
                ...
            },  // will be executed after action
            preAction: function(req, res, next) {
                ...
            },  // will be executed before action
            verbose: false,  // will print the API call on initiation
        })

NOTE: you can set these properties to all the predefined API definitions, you won't be able to override action however.

Run the tests

npm test

Further reading

I have written an article series on RESTful JSON API design which this package is base upon, you can find the three parts here: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Contact

I'm really interested to here what you guys think of Restberry, especially if you have any suggestions to improve the package. Please contact me at [email protected].