ctl

NodeCTL

NodeCTL is an easy way to manage all those routes and ugly handlers in ExpressJS or some other library.

How it works

In the most basic usage, it would be something like this:

server.js

var express = require('express');
var app = express.createServer();
require('./controller.js').route(app);
app.listen(80);

controller.js

var host = require('ctl').ctl();
exports.route = function (server) {
	host.bind("/", function (page) {
		page.write("hello, world!");
	});
	host.serve(server);
}

Installation

npm install ctl

Please try it out! If you like it please say thank you. Or better, if you find bugs, have questions, or feedback, feel free to email me at [e-mail].

More Information

NodeCTL is really easy to use. The way it works is instead of the normal way of handling all this ugly stuff in req and res, that stuff is dealt with by a more civilized Request object that handles all of that for you (In the example, this object is passed in as page).

The details of the request object is listed below for your use and reference.

require('ctl').init([defaults]) - This function optionally takes defaults as values that are sent to the template engine for rendering (see render below).

defaults - Is a property holding the object you passed in with init().

headers() - Returns all of the headers from the client's request.

accepts(mimetype) - Checks to see if mimetype is in the accept part of the header.

set(key,val) - Sets the session variable key with value val.

get(key) - Gets the value of the session variable key.

param(name,default) - This is used to get the variables from GET, POST or from the URL. Example uses of this is shown in the examples folder.

redirect(url) - Pretty straightforward. Redirects (with status 302) to url.

json(obj) - Responds with obj as a json string and ends the request.

write(str) - Responds with str and ends the request.

render(tmpl,params) - Renders the template tmpl as you would in ExpressJS, passing in the parameters params to the template. Note that you can set some default parameters that will be sent along if they are not specified by render (of course, render can overwrite defaults).

Advanced Usage