expressway

Expressway (beta)

Expressway is an extensible, MEAN microframework for Node.js, designed to be completely modular. It is heavily influenced by Taylor Otwell's Laravel for PHP and Google's front-end framework, AngularJS.

npm install breachofmind/expressway --save
# Or, for cool kids:
yarn add breachofmind/expressway

Features

• Open source foundation. Like Laravel, Expressway believes in using well-tested open-source components to make up it's core code. Core components include Express, Mongoose, NodeMailer, Passport, Commander CLI, and many common Express middleware modules.
• Angular-style Dependency Injection. Also known as IOC (Inversion of control), Expressway allows you to declare services that can be injected into your functions and class methods.
• Cutting edge. Expressway is written in ES2015 using classes and inheritance. This makes it easy to extend core classes to overwrite or enhance existing functionality.
• Not opinionated. Developers are anal. Some like src, some like lib. Expressway is designed to be agnostic to your application's structure.
• Big or Little. Your project could be as simple as a couple routes or massive with many controllers and routes. Expressway can be as organized or disorganized as you want.
• Controller and Middleware classes. Separate your middleware stacks and business logic into composable and configurable modules.
• The Missing CLI. Need to quickly see your route stack, services and models? You need a CLI for that.

Dependency Injection

Quite possibly the most useful feature is Expressway's IOC implementation, which is borrowed almost exactly from AngularJS.

• Define a service.
• Add the service name to a function's arguments.
• Call the function using app.call(function).
• Profit.

app.service('profit', "No more require()!");

function myFunction(profit) {
    return profit;
}
app.call(myFunction); // "No more require()"!

This is a very simple example. Imagine how useful this is when it's available in your controller routes:

class MyController extends expressway.Controller
{
    /**
    * MyController.index route.
    * GET /
    */
    index(request,response,next,profit) {
        return profit;
    }
}

Services can be anything - strings, functions, objects, etc.

Usage

Yeoman generator

If you just want to get started with a sensible structure, the Expressway Yeoman generator is the way to go.

npm install breachofmind/expressway-generator -g
mkdir myApp && cd myApp
yo expressway myApp

Quick and Dirty

• Install the package using npm install breachofmind/expressway.
• Create an entry file:

// expressway.js
var expressway = require('expressway');
var app = expressway({
    rootPath: __dirname,
});

// Add some services.
function motivationalQuote() {
    return `A nation that separates it's warriors from 
    its scholars will have its fighting done by fools 
    and its thinking done by cowards.`;
}

app.service(motivationalQuote);

// Expressway apps have a "root" app.
// Any extensions you might add later are mounted to this root app.
app.root.routes = [
    {
        // Routes are added in a declarative manner.
        "GET /" : function(request,response,next) {
            return response.send("Hello World");
        },
        // Anonymous routes allow for dependency injection.
        "GET /quote" : function(request,response,next,motivationalQuote) {
            return response.send( motivationalQuote() );
        },
        // As your app gets bigger, you might want to add a controller.
        "GET /:model" : "ModelController.fetchAll",
        
        // You may want to stack middleware on a route.
        "POST /:model/:id" : [
            // The name of a middleware to pass through.
            "ModelRequest", 
            // An anonymous middleware.
            function(request,response,next) {
                console.log('middleware test');
                next();
            },
            // Add finally, the controller method I wanted.
            "ModelController.save"
        ]
    },
    // A simple "NotFound" middleware in case nothing is matched.
    'NotFound'
];

// Start the server.
app.start();

• Run the file: node expressway.js
• Build something interesting.

Documentation

The Wiki is where it's at.
I'll be adding more documentation very soon as the API smooths out.

Testing

mocha test