nodegate

The easy plugin to programmatically manage a JSON API Gateway. Builded on top of Express & Request.

const nodegate = require('nodegate');
const gate = nodegate();
const { aggregate } = nodegate.modifiers;

gate.route({
  method: 'get',
  path: '/user/:user',
  pipeline: [
    aggregate('get', 'https://api.github.com/users/{params.user}'),
    aggregate('get', 'https://api.github.com/users/{params.user}/gists'),
  ],
});

gate.listen(8080);

Usage

This plugin help you to solve the well known problem of API management. Some people are doing this by themselves, others by using complex tools or services, but even with this kind of systems you will have to program some mechanics. Nodegate help you to programmatically configure, develop and run your API gateway, in the simple way.

Philosophy

The concept of nodegate is simple:

• You declare the gateway routes,
• Each route have a pipeline,
• Each pipeline contain one or more modifier,
• For each call, a data container will pass through every modifier before the response.

And yes, there is more!

A bunch of modifiers are bundled with this plugin. I hope the community will soon create tons of usefull plugins around nodegate!

Table of content

• Installation
• Hello world!
• API
  • nodegate()
  • Gateway
  • Routes
  • Container
  • Pipelines
  • Modifiers
• Create a plugin
• License

---

Installation

You know the drill:

$ npm install nodegate

Hello world!

Displaying "Hello world!" is a nonsense for this kind of plugin. We gather the weather data from a plugin API: MetaWeather.

We will create a route allowing us to fetch the weather for any city in the world.

Let's check the API documentation first:

The route /api/location/search/?query=(query) allow us to fetch metadata about a city, containing the woeid attribute needed to fetch the weather of the city with the route /api/location/(woeid).

Two API calls are needed, perfect example!

After installing nodegate, let's create a file index.js. We will require nodegate and initializing it. We will also need the aggregator modifier, let's import it also.

const nodegate = require('nodegate');

const gate = nodegate();
const { aggregate } = nodegate.modifiers;

Now we will create our first route, GET, with the name of the city on the path. The route object need three attributes: the method, the path, and the pipeline. The pipeline will then be processes synchronously, using on each step a container generated from the request, and containing the parameters and the body of the request.

gate.route({
  method: 'get',
  path: '/weather/:city',
  pipeline: [
  ],
});

Now we have to set the pipeline of our route. The process is simple: we need to fetch the woeid from the first route of the API, then to fetch the weather from the second one. On this example, we will return all the collected data by using the aggregate modifier two times.

gate.route({
  method: 'get',
  path: '/weather/:city',
  pipeline: [
    aggregate('get', 'https://www.metaweather.com/api/location/search/?query={params.city}', 'search'),
    aggregate('get', 'https://www.metaweather.com/api/location/{body.search.0.woeid}'),
  ],
});

Note that all the data contained on the container are accessible on the urls.

We finally just have to listen a port:

gate.listen(8080);

And to start our server by using your terminal:

$ node index.js

That's it! Open your brower and try it out by typing on the url: http://localhost:8080/weather/paris

You should have a JSON with all the data we wanted!

You can find this complete example here.

API

The API of nodegate is really simple to handle. The plugin is a function returning the gateway, the routes are simple objects, pipelines are arrays and modifier pure functions.

Everything is detailled bellow:

• nodegate()
• Gateway
• Routes
• Container
• Pipelines
• Modifiers

nodegate()

The plugin by itself is a javascript function returning the gateway.

const nodegate = require('nodegate');
const gateway = nodegate();

Properties

modifiers

This object contains all the built-in modifiers shipped with nodegate.

const nodegate = require('nodegate');
const { aggregate } = nodegate.modifiers;
// or
const aggregate = nodegate.modifiers.aggregate;

Methods

configure([options])

Set the global configuration for nodegate, but also for Express and Request.

const nodegate = require('nodegate');

nodegate.configure({
  useCors: false,
});

If configure is called without options, the configuration will be reseted.

Configuration properties

Property	Type	Description	Default
express	object	An object containing the express configuration.
express.useCors	boolean	Express will use the CORS middleware with the default values.	true

Gateway

The gateway is by convention, the resulting object when calling the top level nodegate() function. It contains the methods you need to configure and start your gateway.

const nodegate = require('nodegate');
const gateway = nodegate();

gateway.route({
  method: 'get',
  path: '/gateway-route',
  pipeline: [...],
});

gateway.listen(8080);

Methods

route(route)

Add one or more route to the gateway.

gateway.route({
  method: 'get',
  path: '/gateway-route',
  pipeline: [...],
});

Arguments

Argument	Type	Description
route	object or [object]	Route or array of routes to add to the gateway.

Routes

Container

Pipelines

Modifiers

All modifiers can be accessed from the top level function of nodegate or by direclty import the modifiers path:

const nodegate = require('nodegate');
const { aggregate } = nodegate;

// Or

const { aggregate } = require('nodegate/modifiers');

Here is the complete list of all the bundled modifiers:

• aggregate(method, url, [property])
• filter(properties)
• waitfor(method, url, test)

aggregate(method, url, [property])

Execute a request with the content of the container and aggregate the result to it. If property is set, the result will be aggregated to the defined property name on the container.

Arguments

Argument	Type	Description
method	string	Method of the request.
url	string	URL to call.
property	string	Aggregate the result to that property name.

Example

const pipeline = [
  aggregate('get', 'https://api.github.com/users/shudrum'),
];

filter(properties)

Filter the container's body to keep only the properties listed on the properties argument array.

Arguments

Argument	Type	Description
properties	array	Array containing all the properties to keep.

Example

const pipeline = [
  filter(['firstname', 'lastname']),
];

waitfor(method, url, test)

Execute a request until the test argument function returns true. The test function will receive two arguments: A simplified response, and the container of the route.

Arguments

Argument	Type	Description
method	string	Method of the request.
url	string	URL to call.
test	function	Function to execute on each request to test the result.

Examples

const pipeline = [
  waitfor(
    'get',
    'https://api.github.com/users/shudrum',
    response => response.statusCode === 200,
  );
];

const pipeline = [
  waitfor(
    'get',
    'https://api.github.com/users/shudrum',
    (response, body) => response.user.firstname === body.user.firstname,
  ),
];

Default configuration

{
  "delay": 300,
  "tentatives": 10,
}

License

MIT