mrpotatoes / express-autoloader

A module that allows the autoloading of express routes. Written in TypeScript

Why

1. I don't feel that adding express routes manually is a good use of my time.
2. I want to spend time figuring out & debugging why a path isn't being added.
3. Having a common interface makes it easy to create
4. The name of the path function isn't important, it's the path
5. The Route should be self sufficient and should declare everything it needs itself.
6. I like clean code and this will make things far cleaner.
7. I don't like try/catch code in my handlers.
   • That should be handled by some wrapping function and I declare my happy path and unhappy path functions
8. Dependencies shouldn't be hard to handle so I'm trying to make that easier.

Use

Check out ./example to see more examples

Simplest setup

Your app.js

try {
  const paths = routesLoader(app, path.join(__dirname, '/some/dir'), true)

  // Do this if you wanna see the output of all the paths.
  console.log()
  console.table(paths)
} catch (error) {
  console.log(error.toString())
}

Example test.route.ts. This is the minimal configuration needded to get it to be picked up.

Notes:

• Your file must include the route.ts at the end. That's how the app finds the routes.
• You can have multiple routes exported in a single file.
  • see: test.routes.ts
• The error handler has the same signature as run
• You needn't but it is beneficial to define your dependencies in Route<T>
  • see: test.routes.ts and test.routes.ts

export const cart = (): Route<object> => ({
  method: METHOD.GET,
  path: 'some/uri/:id',

  run: async (deps: Dependencies): Promise<JSONResponse> => {
    const { req } = deps // By default Express' req & res are added to deps.

    if (parseInt(req.params.id) == 1) {
      throw new Error('You can use the default error handler or make your own')
    }

    // Always return your JSON, do not need to use res.send
    return {
      origUrl: req.originalUrl
    }
  },
})

A note on Dependencies

When determining your type for dependencies make sure that you extend the main one. req, res and logger are all required and all routes will expect them. After that feel free to add your own in.

---

API

Eventually

Examples

Single line installer:

git clone https://github.com/mrpotatoes/express-autoloader.git; npm i; npm run example

To test it out run the curl commands that the example outputs and change any :vars variables that are needed

Currently broken things

• I cannot use TS Paths in the config. What's up with that?
• Add in the vscode debugging stuff to make life easier.