recursive-routing

Configure Express.js routes recursively using a directory structure. Very easy to configure and use.

Inspired in express-recursive-routes by @megadix.

Installation

Installation is done using the npm install command:

$ npm i --save recursive-routing

Usage

As @megadix explained in express-recursive-routes, others libraries like express-generator creates routes under a /routes directory, but you need to manually register every route like this:

var index = require('./routes/index');
var users = require('./routes/users');

app.use('/', index);
app.use('/users', users);

And it's very annoying to have to do this for every route. I mean, it literally takes a lot of time if you have a lot of routes.

✨ And that's why this package exists ✨

express-recursive-routes is a great library, but it doesn't allow you much freedom and customization to configure routes. And also uses deprecated features with newer versions of Node.js.

With recursive-routing, you can let the library do the heavy lifting for you. It will create routes recursively, and you can configure the routes with a directory structure.

Just do:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

const recursiveRouting = require('recursive-routing');

recursiveRouting(app);

app.listen(3000);

Then under routes directory, you can create a directory structure like this:

routes/
├── index.js
├── users/
│   ├── index.js
│   └── profile.js

And, by example, in /routes/index.js, you can create a route like this:

const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
	res.send('Hello World!');
});

module.exports = router;

And voila! You have a fully configured Express.js application.

recursive-routing translates every directory into a route, by example, /routes/users/profile.js will be translated to /users/profile, and /routes/users/index.js will be translated to /users.

And what if I need to use routes with different HTTP methods?

Well, recursive-routing supports it too.

const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
	res.send('Hello World from GET!');
});

router.post('/', function(req, res) {
	res.send('Hello World from POST!');
});

// And also supports routes with parameters!
router.get('/:id', function(req, res) {
	res.send(`Hello World from GET with id: ${req.params.id}`);
});

module.exports = router;

Configuration

recursive-routing exports a function that can be used to configure the routes, and the function parameters are:

recursiveRouting(app: express.Application, options?: RecursiveRoutingOptions): void

The configuration is done by passing an object to recursive-routing function.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

const recursiveRouting = require('recursive-routing');

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './api-routes',
	'routePrefix': '/api',
	'replaceSpacesWith': '_'
});

app.listen(3000);

The options of recursive-routing are:

Option	Type	Default	Description
rootDir	string	'./routes'	The root directory of routes.
basePath	string	'/'	The base path of routes.
filter	function(string)	f => f.endsWith('.js')	A function that returns true if the file should be included in the routes.
mountFunction	function(express.Application, data, express.Router)	(app, data, router) => app.use(data.expressRoutes, router)	A function that mounts the routes.
replaceSpacesWith	string	'-'	The string that will be used to replace spaces in the route path.
keepExtension	boolean	false	If true, the extension of the file will be kept.
keepIndex	boolean	false	If true, the index.js file will be kept as /index too.
debug	boolean	false	If true, the debug messages will be printed.

In the mountFunction function, there's a parameter data that contains the data of the route. It's an object with the following properties:

Name	Type	Description
route	string	The path of the found file.
routePath	string	The path of the file with the base path.
routeName	string	The name of the file without extension.
fullPath	string	The full path of the file.
expressRoutes	string[]	The array of Express.js routes.

And that data will be printed to the console if debug is true.

Examples

Simple routing

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './api-routes',
	'routePrefix': '/api',
	'replaceSpacesWith': '_'
});

app.listen(3000);

Website routing with REST API

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './api-routes',
	'routePrefix': '/api',
	'filter': f => f.endsWith('.js') || f.endsWith('.ts'),,
	'mountFunction': (app, data, router) => {
		console.log(data);

		for (var i in data.expressRoutes) {
			data.expressRoutes[i] = data.expressRoutes[i].replace(/^\/api/, '');
		}

		app.use(data.expressRoutes, router);
	}
});

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './website'
});

app.listen(443);

La macarena

const ejs = require('ejs');

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.use(express.static('public'));

app.get('/sing-a-song/', (req, res) => {
	res.render('sing-a-song', {
		'name': 'La macarena'
	});
});

recursiveRouting(app, {
	'rootDir': './views',
	'routePrefix': '/views'
});

app.listen(443);

Contributing

This project is open-source and you can contribute to it by opening an issue or creating a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.