A simple file-based router for Express.js with automatic routes remounting on file changes without the need to restart the server.

npm install remount-router --save

or

yarn add remount-router

The remount-router comes as middleware and takes a couple of options. Take this example server for instance:

const path = require('path')
const express = require('express')
const remountRouter = require('remount-router')

const app = express()

app.use(remountRouter({
  expressAppInstance: app,
  apiEndpoint: '/api',
  controllersPath: path.join(__dirname, 'controllers')
}))

app.listen(17777)

This will parse all *.js files in the ./controllers directory and mounts it to the /api endpoint.

The name of a controller file will be used as the parent route. Controllers must export an Object, the keys define the HTTP verb and the route. Each verb/route can have one Function or an Array of Functions.

Let's take the controller file ./controllers/users.js for example:

module.exports = {
  'GET /' (req, res) {
    res.json({ action: 'find all users' })
  },

  'POST /admin/:id': [
    (req, res, next) => {
      // middleware to be executed before the route function
      next()
    },

    (req, res) => {
      res.json({ action: 'save a new user' })
    }
  ]
}

This will result in two routes: GET /api/users and POST /api/users/admin/:id. Note that you can use middleware if you pass an Array to the verb/route key.

The verb (GET, POST, PUT, etc.) can be any routing method offered by Express.js (app.get(), app.post(), app.put(), etc.).

If the option isDev is true, all matching controller files will be watched for changes (adding/removing files, editing files). If a change is detected, a new router is generated and remounted to the apiEndpoint.

Options are passed to remount-router as an Object (as seen in the initialization example).

const defaults = {
  expressAppInstance: null,
  controllersPath: path.join(process.cwd(), 'controllers'),
  controllersGlob: '*.js',
  apiEndpoint: '/api',
  isDev: !(process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production')
}

The instance of your main app created with express(). This is used to initially mount the router. But more importantly, it is used to remount the router (there is no other way than passing it as an option).

Where to find controller files to parse. Note that the default is pointing to the controllers directory in the current working directory. This is convenient to quickly get started, but the process.cwd() might change when you deploy to another system. Therefor it is advised to overwrite this option with an absolute path (as seen in the initialization example).

This defaults to *.js and is consumed by the Glob module. Set this option if you do not have controllers only in the controllers directory. You might have *.test.js files along the controllers, then you would exclude them by overwriting this option with *!(.test).js.

This defaults to /api and is the endpoint where the router is mounted and all sub-routes parsed from the controllers will be mounted on. Remember, a controller named ./controllers/posts.js with a route key GET /all will result in the GET route /api/posts/all.

This defaults to true if the NODE_ENV environment variable is not production, otherwise it is false. File watching and route remounting will only happen if this option is true.

Implementing remount-router in Nuxt.js is super simple. After you've installed the module (yarn add remount-router), add it to your nuxt.config.js as a module like so:

module.exports = {
  modules: [
    'remount-router/nuxt'
  ]
}

Notice that we don't pass any options: the expressAppInstance is created for you, and the controllersPath is set to /controllers inside Nuxt's srcDir. The isDev option equals to Nuxt's dev option.

However, you can pass custom options like so:

module.exports = {
  modules: [
    ['remount-router/nuxt', {
      controllersGlob: '*!(.test).js',
      apiEndpoint: '/api/v1'
    }]
  ]
}

yarn
yarn test

• 2017-08-29: Add Nuxt.js module wrapper
• 2017-08-25: Initial release

Copyright 2017 Sebastian Senf (enkrateia.me)

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