restle

restle

Restle is an incredibly lightweight (and unstable) RESTful API engine.

Restle currently supports properly sideloading data for Ember-Data. This framework is currently a side-project of mine, but I plan on extensively developing and testing it eventually, maybe. As of now, the framework should not be used for any serious applications. However, Restle has a near-zero learning curve, making it great for rapidly prototyping APIs.

Getting started

$ npm install restle --save
$ npm install express --save
$ npm install mongoose --save

var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var express = require('express');
var app = express();

// Initialize Restle with modelsRootPath,
// i.e. the path where your models are defined.
var restle = require('restle')(app, {
  modelsRootPath: __dirname + '/models'
});

// Connect to the database.
var url = 'mongodb://....';
mongoose.connect(url, options);

// Listen on some port.
app.listen(3000);

Restle expects models to be defined via proper folders:

/models/post/schema.js
/models/comment/schema.js
/models/user/schema.js

A schema is a simple exported object:

// /models/post/schema.js
module.exports.v1 = {
  title: String,
  comments: [{
    ref: 'Comment'
  }]
};

Note The above v1 is used to denote that this model is 'version one.' Multiple verions currently do not work. Versioning will work eventually, but for now, you must specify v1 when exporting the schema.

Schemas are identical to Mongoose Schemas except there is no need to specify type: Schema.Types.ObjectId when a ref: Model syntax is found. The directory structure above automatically routes:

GET     /api/v1/posts
GET     /api/v1/posts/:post_id
POST    /api/v1/posts
PUT     /api/v1/posts/:post_id
DELETE  /api/v1/posts/:post_id

...

You cannot configure the API namespace yet, the default is /api/v1/. I built this to work with Ember Data, so as of now, in order to POST or PUT something, you must use the following syntax:

POST /api/v1/comments

{
  "comment": {
    "text": "I don't like you.",
    "post": 164,
    "user": 1451
  }
}

PUT /api/v1/comments/213

{
  "comment": {
    "text": "Just kidding!"
  }
}

My goals are to incorporate authentication, tasks, query overloading, and a lot more.