Express Easy Routes

Convention over Configuration library to load Express Routes without having to configure each route.

This library is designed to have a perfect balance between configuration and flexibility.

The Problem

Each route requires manual configuration with the app. This can become verbose.

const routes = require("@paciolan/express-easy-routes");
const cors = require("cors");
const express = require("express");
const app = express();

const port = 8080;

app.use(express.json()); // ❌ NO!
app.use(express.static()); // ❌ NO!
app.use(cors()); // ❌ NO!

// ❌ NO!
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Hello World!");
});

// ❌ NO!
app.get("/route-1", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Hello Route1!");
});

// ❌ NO!
app.get("/route-2", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Hello Route2!");
});

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Listening on http://localhost:${port}`));

The Solution

Put middlewares and routes in specified directories (by Convention), then load all routes from those directories.

Now adding a route no longer requires manually configuration.

const routes = require("@paciolan/express-easy-routes");
const express = require("express");
const app = express();

const port = 8080;

// ✅ YES!
routes({ app, path: __dirname + "/middlewares/**/*.middleware.js" });
routes({ app, path: __dirname + "/controllers/**/*.controller.js" });

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Listening on http://localhost:${port}`));

Install

npm install @paciolan/express-easy-routes

Example Routes

middleware/cors.middleware.js

In this example, I am going to add the CORS middlware.

const express = require("express");
var cors = require("cors");
const router = express.Router();

router.use(cors());

module.exports = {
  order: 100, // optional
  router
};

That's it! We just added CORS into our express app!

controllers/index.controller.js

Next let's create our main controller route.

const express = require("express");
const router = express.Router();

router.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Hello World!");
});

module.exports = {
  order: 100, // optional
  router
};

middlewares/profiler.middleware.js

Create a profiler that will first, create a timer, then finally log out the time.

note: middleware that needs to run first, should have a low order.

const express = require("express");
const router = express.Router();

router.use((req, res, next) => {
  const start = process.hrtime();

  res.once("finish", () => {
    const [seconds, nanoseconds] = process.hrtime(start);
    const milliseconds = (seconds * 1000) + (nanoseconds / 1000000); // prettier-ignore

    console.info(
      `${req.method} ${req.url} ${res.statusCode} ${milliseconds}ms`
    );
  });

  next();
});

module.exports = {
  order: 1,
  router
};

It is now easy to find the route in your directories. Copy and Paste to move routes from one project to another.

src/
  controllers/
    index.controller.js
  middlewares/
    cors.middleware.js
    profiler.middleware.js
  app.js

Unit Testing

Express Easy Routes also makes testing routes easy.

Create the file controllers/__tests__/index.controller.test.js.

const { response: mockRes } = require("jest-mock-express");
const { router } = require("../index.route");

describe("route /", () => {
  test("returns 'Success!'", () => {
    const req = { method: "GET", url: "/" };
    const res = mockRes();
    router(req, res);
    expect(res.send).toHaveBeenCalledWith("Success!");
  });
});

API

RouteConfig - Config passed into the routes function.

Property	Required	Description
app	✅	Express app object. (the one returned from calling express()).
path	✅	Absolute (full) glob to routes.

RouteModule - Exports for the route files.

Property	Required	Description
router	✅	Express Router object.
order		Sort (Ascending) order of route.

Contributors

Joel Thoms (https://twitter.com/joelnet)

Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC 3.0 BY