comicvine-client

ComicVine Client for remote API, based on Backbone

Features

• Exports ComicVine API resources as Backbone collections, ready to be consumed.
• Uses Redis for caching API responses.
• Modeled resources:
  • Characters
  • Concepts
  • Issues
  • Locations
  • Movies
  • Objects
  • Origins
  • Persons
  • Powers
  • Publishers
  • StoryArcs
  • Teams
  • Volumes

Dependencies

• Backbone, used to map API Resources into objects
• request, used to make http requests to the API
• caching, used to provide a redis caching layer

Tests

The module provides a set of tests (althougt some methods doesn't have tests yet). The tests has been created using mocha. To run the tests:

1. Install mocha globally

$ npm install -g mocha
$ cd comicvine-client
$ mocha

1. If you have mocha installed as a dependency

$ cd comicvine-client
$ npm install mocha
$ node_modules/mocha/bin/mocha

Usage

Initialization

var ComicVineClient = require('comicvine');

var client = new ComicVineClient({
    //Example API key, insert your API key here. More info http://api.comicvine.com/
    apikey: "40ffdec6b2f84ffa415b5f24d289175ae907a6a1",

    //Base URL for all the API requets. Don't change it unless you are using your own proxy or something like that.
    apiUrl: "http://api.comicvine.com",

    //Use redis cache for http requests
    cache: 'redis',

    //Redis host
    host: "192.168.56.2",

    //Redis port
    port: 6379,
});

or

var ComicVineClient = require('comicvine');

var client = new ComicVineClient({
    //Example API key, insert your API key here. More info http://api.comicvine.com/
    apikey: "40ffdec6b2f84ffa415b5f24d289175ae907a6a1",

    //Don't use cache
    //It is *highly recommended* to not disable the cache. ComicVine API is not very fast and very verbose, so
    //not using cache will definetly kill your performance.
    cache: false
});

Get a paginated list of characters

client.collections.pageSize = 20; //100 by default
client.collections.Characters.fetch( {
    //Regular Backbone.Collection.fetch options here...
});

//...later...

client.collections.Characters.fetchNextPage({
    //Regular Backbone.Collection.fetch options here...
})

Get all the list of characters

//Don't even try this without a populated cache, will take ages
client.collections.Characters.fetchAll({
    success: function(collection) {
        //Run this callback after all the collection has been retrieved
    },
    each: function(collection) {
        //Run this callback after each page retrieval (will be used as success callback for each fetchNextPage() call)
    },
    error: function(collection) {
        //Run this callback if there is any error (will be used as error callback for each fetchNextPage() call)
    }
});

Use API Search to find the real name of the best superhero ever

var searchCollection = new client.Search("Batman","character");

//Now searchCollection is a regular paginated collection. You can set pageSize, use .fetch(), .fetchNextPage()...
searchCollection.fetchAll({
    success: function(results) {
        var batman = results.where({"name": "Batman"})[0];
        console.log( batman.get("real_name") );
    }
})

Note that ComicVine Search is a bit too user-friendly: it will return any character with "Batman" or some variation in the name (like, "Bat-Man" or "Batmankoff"). Probably you will need to filter the resutling list on your own, using .filter() or .where().

TODO

• Allow limit the number of fields returned in each request
• Add tests for fetchAll()
• Add a method to detect if a Model has been loaded completly
• Better error detection