restq

#RestQ RestQ is a little helper module that allows you to follow RESTful API links in a more declarative style.

Why is that cool?

OK, let's say we have a server that exposes a /posts/42.json resource, which contains an {"author": {"person_id": "foo"}} link to a /people/<person_id>.json resource. And we want to get the post author's email.

One way would be to do something like this:

request.get('http://server.com/posts/42.json, (err, res, body) ->
  if err or res.statusCode isnt 200
    # Handle errors here...
  request.get('http://server.com/people/#{body.author.id}.json), (err, res, body) ->
    if err or res.statusCode isnt 200
      # Handle errors here.
    email = body['email-address']
    

Now that's not too terrible, but it's not awesome either. The nesting is kind of annoying (imagine what happens when there are more levels...) and the code is just not as readable as it could be.

So how does RestQ help?

Well, with RestQ, we can call:

emailPromise = RQ.from('http://server.com/posts/42.json')
  .via('/people/{author.id}.json')
  .get('email-address')
  

And we get a 'thenable' (promise) for the post author's email stored in emailPromise.

Now when we need the actual email address, we do:

p.then (email) -> ... email is here ...

et voila!

Installation

npm install restq

Running tests

npm test

Kudos to

Underscore, Underscore.string, Q, Request