accounts-api

accounts-api

This app follows a few constraints to try and make it easy to plug into a node http server.

The goal is a simple API resource that can be used on its own or in other servers.

The file organization and approach is inspired in part by django's idea of apps.

Usage

To use it, you'd include it in the server like this:

var http = require('http')
var response = require('response')
var level = require('level')
var db = level('db')
var accounts = require('accounts-api')(db)

var server = http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  /* 
  * if req.url matches a route, it will return, 
  * otherwise, another part of the application can respond 
  */
  if (accounts.serve(req, res)) return
  response().json({ message: 'hi' }).pipe(res)
})

server.listen(4444)

Account roles

By default, there are three roles an account can have: admin, owner, collaborator

• admin
  • is a boolean, and gives site-wide access
  • implies create, read, update, and delete scopes for all models
• owner
  • is an array of keys for models that the account has created or for which the account has been granted owner status
  • implies create, read, update, and delete scopes on all models the account is an owner
• collaborator
  • is an array of keys for models for which the account has been granted collaborator status
  • implies create, read, and update scopes on all models the account is a collaborator

Here's how you might check to see if a user is the owner of a model:

var access = auth.checkRoles(obj.key, account)
if (access && access.role === 'owner') {
  // do the things that owners can do
}

Account scopes

Scopes are granular permissions for models or other arbitrary actions in your application.

By default there is an accounts scope, and all users are allowed to read accounts.

Here's an example of adding a custom posts scope to accounts so you can check if an account has the proper scope in other parts of your application:

var createAccounts = require('accounts-api')({
  secret: 'test',
  scopes: {
    posts: {
      type: 'object',
      properties: {
        actions: {
          type: 'array',
          items: { type: 'string', enum: ['create', 'read', 'update', 'delete'] }
        }
      },
      default: { actions: ['create', 'read'] }
    }
  }
})

var accounts = createAccounts({ db: memdb() })

To check if an account has the proper scope:

auth.checkScopes(['read:posts', 'create:posts'], account)

Todo

• decide how to handle static assets, and how they might be handled across the application

Structure

• index.js
  • this module provides the model, handler, and routes modules of the app
  • it also provides a serve method that is used to match req.url to the app's routes
• routes.js
  • a simple router that takes the handler as an argument, and matches routes to handler methods
• handler.js
  • takes the model as an argument, and parses requests to perform operations with the model
• model.js
  • provides CRUD and other necessary actions like validation, indexing, etc. This is based on accountdown and leveldb.