Recursive-routing NPM

recursive-routing

Configure Express.js routes recursively using a directory structure. Very easy to configure and use.

Inspired in express-recursive-routes by @megadix.

Installation

Installation is done using the npm install command:

$ npm i --save recursive-routing

Usage

As @megadix explained in express-recursive-routes, others libraries like express-generator creates routes under a /routes directory, but you need to manually register every route like this:

var index = require('./routes/index');
var users = require('./routes/users');

app.use('/', index);
app.use('/users', users);

And it's very annoying to have to do this for every route. I mean, it literally takes a lot of time if you have a lot of routes.

✨ And that's why this package exists ✨

express-recursive-routes is a great library, but it doesn't allow you much freedom and customization to configure routes. And also uses deprecated features with newer versions of Node.js.

With recursive-routing, you can let the library do the heavy lifting for you. It will create routes recursively, and you can configure the routes with a directory structure.

Just do:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

const recursiveRouting = require('recursive-routing');

recursiveRouting(app);

app.listen(3000);

Then under routes directory, you can create a directory structure like this:

routes/
├── index.js
├── users/
│   ├── index.js
│   └── profile.js

And, by example, in /routes/index.js, you can create a route like this:

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

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
	res.send('Hello World!');
});

module.exports = router;

And voila! You have a fully configured Express.js application.

recursive-routing translates every directory into a route, by example, /routes/users/profile.js will be translated to /users/profile, and /routes/users/index.js will be translated to /users.

And what if I need to use routes with different HTTP methods?

Well, recursive-routing supports it too.

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

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
	res.send('Hello World from GET!');
});

router.post('/', function(req, res) {
	res.send('Hello World from POST!');
});

// And also supports routes with parameters!
router.get('/:id', function(req, res) {
	res.send(`Hello World from GET with id: ${req.params.id}`);
});

module.exports = router;

Configuration

recursive-routing exports a function that can be used to configure the routes, and the function parameters are:

recursiveRouting(app: express.Application, options?: RecursiveRoutingOptions): void

The configuration is done by passing an object to recursive-routing function.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

const recursiveRouting = require('recursive-routing');

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './api-routes',
	'routePrefix': '/api',
	'replaceSpacesWith': '_'
});

app.listen(3000);

The options of recursive-routing are:

Option	Type	Default	Description
`rootDir`	string	`'./routes'`	The root directory of routes.
`basePath`	string	`'/'`	The base path of routes.
`filter`	function(string)	`f => f.endsWith('.js')`	A function that returns `true` if the file should be included in the routes.
`mountFunction`	function(express.Application, data, express.Router)	`(app, data, router) => app.use(data.expressRoutes, router)`	A function that mounts the routes.
`replaceSpacesWith`	string	`'-'`	The string that will be used to replace spaces in the route path.
`keepExtension`	boolean	`false`	If `true`, the extension of the file will be kept.
`keepIndex`	boolean	`false`	If `true`, the `index.js` file will be kept as `/index` too.
`debug`	boolean	`false`	If `true`, the debug messages will be printed.

In the mountFunction function, there's a parameter data that contains the data of the route. It's an object with the following properties:

Name	Type	Description
`route`	string	The path of the found file.
`routePath`	string	The path of the file with the base path.
`routeName`	string	The name of the file without extension.
`fullPath`	string	The full path of the file.
`expressRoutes`	string[]	The array of Express.js routes.

And that data will be printed to the console if debug is true.

Examples

Simple routing

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './api-routes',
	'routePrefix': '/api',
	'replaceSpacesWith': '_'
});

app.listen(3000);

Website routing with REST API

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './api-routes',
	'routePrefix': '/api',
	'filter': f => f.endsWith('.js') || f.endsWith('.ts'),,
	'mountFunction': (app, data, router) => {
		console.log(data);

		for (var i in data.expressRoutes) {
			data.expressRoutes[i] = data.expressRoutes[i].replace(/^\/api/, '');
		}

		app.use(data.expressRoutes, router);
	}
});

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './website'
});

app.listen(443);

La macarena

const ejs = require('ejs');

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.use(express.static('public'));

app.get('/sing-a-song/', (req, res) => {
	res.render('sing-a-song', {
		'name': 'La macarena'
	});
});

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './views',
	'routePrefix': '/views'
});

app.listen(443);