substack / Substack Flavored Webapp
Programming Languages
Here are some tiny backend node modules I like to glue together to build webapps.
This example only includes the backend components.
modules
- tcp-bind - allocate a low port before dropping privileges
- routes - organize routing
- ecstatic - serve static files
- body - parse incoming form data
- trumpet - insert html into layouts
tcp-bind
This module will allocate a port so that you can allocate as root and then drop down into a non-root user after the port has been allocated:
var alloc = require('tcp-bind');
// ...
var fd = alloc(argv.port);
if (argv.gid) process.setgid(argv.gid);
if (argv.uid) process.setuid(argv.uid);
Specify the user and group to drop into with -g and -u.
routes
The routes module is handy for decomposing the different routes of your
webapp.
Create a router with:
var router = require('routes')();
then you can add routes with:
router.addRoute('/robots/:name', function (req, res, params) {
res.end('hello ' + params.name);
});
In the http.createServer() handler function, we can dispatch our routes using:
var m = router.match(req.url);
if (m) m.fn(req, res, m.params);
and then have some fallback handlers if none of the routes matched, like to ecstatic.
ecstatic
To serve static assets out of static/, I use ecstatic:
var st = require('ecstatic')(__dirname + '/static');
and then in the http.createServer() function you can do:
st(req, res)
body
To parse form parameters, I use the body module:
body(req, res, function (err, params) { /* ... */})
or i have a nifty little wrapper function:
function post (fn) {
return function (req, res, params) {
if (req.method !== 'POST') {
res.statusCode = 400;
res.end('not a POST\n');
}
body(req, res, function onbody (err, pvars) {
fn(req, res, xtend(pvars, params));
});
};
}
so that I can wrap an entire route handler in a post():
router.addRoute('/submit', post(function (req, res) {
console.log(params);
res.end('ok!\n');
}));
It might be handy to publish some of these little functions individually to npm but I haven't done that yet.
trumpet
trumpet is a nifty module for pumping content into some html at a css selector.
I use it to make a little layout function:
function layout (res) {
res.setHeader('content-type', 'text/html');
var tr = trumpet();
read('layout.html').pipe(tr).pipe(res);
return tr.createWriteStream('#body');
}
and then in static/layout.html I have an empty element with an id of body:
<html>
<body>
<h1>my way cool website</h1>
<div id="body"></div>
</body>
</body>
Also check out hyperstream, which uses trumpet but lets you specify many selectors at once.
as it grows
As the server file gets bigger, I start moving functions and route handlers into
lib/ or lib/routes or someplace like that.
An example route file in lib/ would look like:
module.exports = function (req, res, params) {
res.end('beep boop\n');
};
and then in the server.js I can do:
router.addRoute('/whatever', require('./lib/someroute.js'));
or if the route needs some extra information, I can return a function in the route instead:
module.exports = function (msg) {
return function (req, res, params) {
res.end(msg + '\n');
};
};
and then in server.js:
router.addRoute('/whatever', require('./lib/someroute.js')('beep boop'));
I try to only pass in the information that a route directly needs, since that keeps the code less coupled to my application.
Try to avoid passing around an app object to everywhere since that can create
huge problems later when refactoring and the code can become very coupled. It
might be ok to pass a bus object around liberally so long as only handles
dispatching events.
running the server
To run the server for development, do:
$ npm start
To run the server on port 80 for production, do:
$ sudo node server.js -u $USER -g $USER