inversify-restify-utils

Some utilities for the development of restify application with Inversify.

Installation

You can install inversify-restify-utils using npm:

$ npm install inversify inversify-restify-utils reflect-metadata --save

The inversify-restify-utils type definitions are included in the npm module and require TypeScript 2.0. Please refer to the InversifyJS documentation to learn more about the installation process.

The Basics

Step 1: Decorate your controllers

To use a class as a "controller" for your restify app, simply add the @Controller decorator to the class. Similarly, decorate methods of the class to serve as request handlers. The following example will declare a controller that responds to `GET /foo'.

import { Request } from 'restify';
import { Controller, Get, interfaces } from 'inversify-restify-utils';
import { injectable, inject } from 'inversify';

@Controller('/foo')
@injectable()
export class FooController implements interfaces.Controller {
    
    constructor( @inject('FooService') private fooService: FooService ) {}
    
    @Get('/')
    private index(req: Request): string {
        return this.fooService.get(req.query.id);
    }
}

Step 2: Configure container and server

Configure the inversify container in your composition root as usual.

Then, pass the container to the InversifyRestifyServer constructor. This will allow it to register all controllers and their dependencies from your container and attach them to the restify app. Then just call server.build() to prepare your app.

In order for the InversifyRestifyServer to find your controllers, you must bind them to the TYPE.Controller service identifier and tag the binding with the controller's name. The Controller interface exported by inversify-restify-utils is empty and solely for convenience, so feel free to implement your own if you want.

import { Container } from 'inversify';
import { interfaces, InversifyRestifyServer, TYPE } from 'inversify-restify-utils';

// set up container
let container = new Container();

// note that you *must* bind your controllers to Controller 
container.bind<interfaces.Controller>(TYPE.Controller).to(FooController).whenTargetNamed('FooController');
container.bind<FooService>('FooService').to(FooService);

// create server
let server = new InversifyRestifyServer(container);

let app = server.build();
app.listen(3000);

Restify ServerOptions can be provided as a second parameter to the InversifyRestifyServer constructor:

let server = new InversifyRestifyServer(container, { name: "my-server" });

Restify ServerOptions can be extended with defaultRoot where one can define a default path that will be prepended to all your controllers:

let server = new InversifyRestifyServer(container, { name: "my-server", defaultRoot: "/v1" });

InversifyRestifyServer

A wrapper for a restify Application.

.setConfig(configFn)

Optional - exposes the restify application object for convenient loading of server-level middleware.

import * as morgan from 'morgan';
// ...
let server = new InversifyRestifyServer(container);
server.setConfig((app) => {
    var logger = morgan('combined')
    app.use(logger);
});

.build()

Attaches all registered controllers and middleware to the restify application. Returns the application instance.

// ...
let server = new InversifyRestifyServer(container);
server
    .setConfig(configFn)
    .build()
    .listen(3000, 'localhost', callback);

Decorators

@Controller(path, [middleware, ...])

Registers the decorated class as a controller with a root path, and optionally registers any global middleware for this controller.

@Method(method, path, [middleware, ...])

Registers the decorated controller method as a request handler for a particular path and method, where the method name is a valid restify routing method.

@SHORTCUT(path, [middleware, ...])

Shortcut decorators which are simply wrappers for @Method. Right now these include @Get, @Post, @Put, @Patch, @Head, @Delete, and @Options. For anything more obscure, use @Method (Or make a PR 😄).

Middleware

Middleware can be either an instance of restify.RequestHandler or an InversifyJS service idenifier.

The simplest way to use middleware is to define a restify.RequestHandler instance and pass that handler as decorator parameter.

// ...
const loggingHandler = (req: restify.Request, res: restify.Response, next: restify.Next) => {
  console.log(req);
  next();
};

@Controller('/foo', loggingHandler)
@injectable()
export class FooController implements interfaces.Controller {
    
    constructor( @inject('FooService') private fooService: FooService ) {}
    
    @Get('/', loggingHandler)
    private index(req: restify.Request): string {
        return this.fooService.get(req.query.id);
    }
}

But if you wish to take full advantage of InversifyJS you can bind the same handler to your IOC container and pass the handler's service identifier to decorators.

// ...
import { TYPES } from 'types';
// ...
const loggingHandler = (req: restify.Request, res: restify.Response, next: restify.Next) => {
  console.log(req);
  next();
};
container.bind<restify.RequestHandler>(TYPES.LoggingMiddleware).toConstantValue(loggingHandler);
// ...
@Controller('/foo', TYPES.LoggingMiddleware)
@injectable()
export class FooController implements interfaces.Controller {
    
    constructor( @inject('FooService') private fooService: FooService ) {}
    
    @Get('/', TYPES.LoggingMiddleware)
    private index(req: restify.Request): string {
        return this.fooService.get(req.query.id);
    }
}