appbase-client

A client to be used in conjunction with appbase.

appbase-client exposes a set of basic functions that can help in rapid frontend development @ Scroll.in.

It can be used directly in browser by loading the file in a script tag or can be used in browserify and webpack environments too.

• In browser, it is available in the window global with the name AppBase.
• In browserify or webpack, it can be used as:
  • var AppBase = require('appbase-client')
  • in ES6, import AppBase from 'appbase-client'

User API

checkSession(errorCallback, showModal, options)

• errorCallback is a function that is called if a valid session is not found.
• showModal's default value is true. It shows a modal dialog if the session is not valid and errorCallback is called when the modal's button is clicked.
• options is an object that should be passes if you want to customise the modal. Its values are documented here.
• This function should be the first to get called before you proceed with your own functions.

isAdmin()

• Checks session and returns true is the current user is an admin, otherwise returns false.

getUser()

• Returns current user's information as an object that is set be server in userinfo cookie. Returns null if cookie is invalid.

sidToUidGroups()

• Returns and object like {uid: 1, groups: ['admin', 'editor']} from the session cookie. Returns null if invalid session.

Network API

setBaseURL(base)

• Sets the base url for api calls to base. For ex: if a resource exists at http://api.example.com/1.0/user/1, you can set the base url to http://api.example.com/1.0 and then call Fetch methods using the endpoints only.

setCredentials(value)

• This is used by the ajax requests to decide whether to send current cookies or not. Valid values are same-origin and include. If not set, same-origin is used.
• Set to same-origin if your client lives on the same domain as the api server.
• Set to include if client and server domains are different.

Fetch API

• Fetch has 5 methods corresponding to each http method: get, post, put, patch and del(instead of delete).
• Fetch abstracts away reponse caching so that subsequest GET requests for the same resource are returned from memory instead of querying server again.

Each method has this signature:

• methodname(path, options={}, success=null, error=null)

• path is the url endpoint to make the request. For ex: first set the base url using setBaseURL(base) and then you can call Fetch.get('/user/1')

• options: you have to pass options object for each function call even if its value is empty({}).

• In options you can pass values like:

  • data:
    • If the called method is get, the key-value pair in data will be appended to the called url as a querystring.
    • Otherwise it will be posted as JSON body unless options.form is true. In that case, the data will be posted as multipart/form-data.
  • form
    • If this value is true, data will be posted as Form, otherwise as JSON. Use form: true if you are uploading files.
  • headers
    • Pass additional headers as an object.

• success is a function that is passed the success response of a Fetch call like success(data).

• error is a function that is passed the error response of a Fetch call like error(err). Here, err has code that is the http error code and response that is the error data that was sent by the server.

• You can also call Fetch.clear(prefix) to manually clear the cache. All cached urls starting with prefix will be cleared.

• If you call Fetch.clear() without any arguments, the full cache will be cleared.

Setting up for development:

• git clone https://github.com/brijeshb42/appbase-client.git
• cd appbase-client
• npm install
• Run npm run dev. It will start a development server @ http://localhost:8080 where you can test the API on the window global AppBase.
• npm run build will build the library for use in production.