Webservices NPM

node-webservices

Web server that can spawn services

Installation

$ npm install -g webservices

Usage

node-webservices -d /usr/local/services/ -p 8080

Options

-d, --directory: Directory where the services are located (default: ./services)
-p, --port: HTTP port for the server (default: 8080)
-c, --config: Optional JSON file where to find the config.

Documentation

Webservice development

Each folder located in directory is supposed to be a Node.js package. It must have an index.js entrypoint or a package.json file with a main property.
For now, you have to npm install the eventual dependencies in each webservice directory.

The webservice module must implement a run method that returns a yieldable. Under the hood, co is used so any type supported by co can be returned.
The method will be called for each request to the webservice with a message.

The message has the following properties (example call : http://localhost/services/myservice/a/b?x=0):

url: URL of the webservice, as used by the client (http://localhost/services/myservice/)
path: Array of path elements starting after the service name ('a', 'b')
query: Query string parsed as a map ({x: '0'})
body: If the request has a body, it will be in this property (parsed with koa-body)

The service can return two kinds of data:

a string: Will be sent as is to the client with a 200 code.
an object with the following properties:
content: string or JSON, full response content
file: path to a file from which the response content must be read
contenttype or mimetype: sets the Content-Type header to this value
filename: sets a Content-Disposition header of type attachment with the provided filename
status: custom status code
headers: object with custom headers

The service can optionally implement an init method. It has to return a yieldable as well and will be executed once on the first request.