I'm trying to understand how to add i18n support to loopback which is built on top of express.js.
I've installed i18n-node and have read the express.js documentation. It looks like I don't want a global state of localization because I'll be serving HTTP responses. The i18n-node documentation recommends I attach it to the request object and gives an example.
My problem is that I can't find where/how to add this code into loopback. Everywhere I try to put the app.configuration function it says that method is undefined.
I have a feeling this is a middleware addition that I want to add to the middleware.json file in the routes phase. But I don't know how to do that.
Does anybody know a good way to internationalise a loopback app (server response messages, emails going out etc.)?
As per the documentation on their Github Page. I think the configuration code is best to keep in server/boot/ folder. As these are loaded as the server start and then, can be used by other rest endpoints. Don't forget to add JSON files for translations.
I don't think there are any other requirements as LoopBack is built on top of Express and most of their codes work same.
Related
I want to use React for a project I am working on, but I also want to use an API.
How can I do it?
I have tried to Google this and ask different people, but I have not got a response yet, so I thought I would ask here. I want to use express and maybe not use create-react-app (as it takes up a lot of storage).
Working on a custom server doesen't preclude the use of an API.
If you want fetch the API from the express server and inject it directly on react frontend you need to enable server side rendering (useful post) and pass the data collected as a props from the server (check this example).
Rather then you can build your react project (using even create-react-app) and build an express server who return the index.html on call.
Personally I prefer the first one solution.
I have always wondered how can I do this..
if you go https://community.nodebb.org/topic/14103/strange-thing-on-this-forum
It shows a thread in a forum.
But you can actually access to that same page with https://community.nodebb.org/topic/14103
and then this url changes to the 1st one above.
How can I do this in Node.js?
Node itself is just the language, what you're asking about happens in a framework, like Express.
In Express (and most other frameworks) you can define routes based on either strings, symbols, or a regex. In your above example, the route definition is likely looking for topic/:id and also set to accept anything put after the ID.
Look at the basics of Routing in Express to see how this works.
I'm looking into node.js which really seem like a pretty nice environment. I've worked with a lot of different Technologies and for server, mainly php and Java (jsp), but dabbled in som RoR and Python.
I find node.js really easy to get up and running and it feels quite natural to work with, and I found some good entry level tutorials.
I just am missing some more intermediate resources. For example when creating bigger frameworks or api's how would you structure or architect it. I set up some smaller api's to try it out where it would go something like this:
I've made use of the Express framework to create a http server, listen to a port, set up an express object and bound some requests.
However these have been quite small, and the purpose has been learning, if I think about scaling up the size of the API for production, perhaps wanting to do other stuff like serve web-pages as well. I find it hard to see how the architecture would look.
It's vague as I am still new to node.js but I'm mainly thinking about things like if you typically keep all api in one file or if there are good ways to split it up into modules? And if anyone know any resource talking a bit more about how to design the architecture when working in node.js
Sorry for the vague question and thanks for reading.
In my opinion, Express is the good way to go if you want to build complex or big APIs.
It is among others easily testable (for instance with Mocha or Jasmine) and customizable, especially thanks to its middlewares.
For the directory structure, what I usually use is (at least) the following:
app.js : the main entrypoint. Will create the express application, indicate which controller to use for every route prefix, and assign the middlewares. Example from a previous project
controllers : will contain the controllers, the functions which will handle the requests, in the same style as in standard MVC frameworks (e.g. UserController, ...). Each controller would create an express Router object and export it. Inside the controllers, individual handlers are in charge of individual API requests, such as /api/users/list. It would use some library to access your data (e.g. Mongoose for MongoDB), and would then send the response to the client. Example (UserController.js)
models : will contain the models with all their attributes and methods. In my case, it would be the Mongoose models. Example (Song.js)
middlewares : will contain the various middlewares of the project. A practical example would be a middleware checking for an access token in the incoming request, and returning a 403 HTTP error if not. Example (AuthMiddleware.js)
helpers : various helpers
tests : unit tests of you API
This could be the minimal directory organization. On top of that, you may want to use a templating engine such as EJS to serve webpage. Take a look at « Use EJS to template your node application ».
This is only to give you an overview of what an express directory structure could look like, but there are of course plenty (better?) other possibilities. Hope that gives you a quick and useful insight :)
I inherited an existing API and I would like to document it with swagger, but I don't yet know the full scope of it. Can Swagger (or another middleware/tool) auto-magically generate the yaml (for swagger) based on the existing express routes?
For what I saw on other questions, it would appear that this is mostly a manual job, but I'm double-checking if someone here found a way around this.
I have experience in BOTH auto-generating the Swagger json and manually writing it out for an API that I helped build. Here are the pros/cons of both based on my experience.
Swagger AUTOMATIC Documentation Generation:
We used the swagger-node-express module in combination with swagger-ui.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/swagger-node-express
https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui
Pros
Super easy to document. Just throw a few lines above the resource definition and the documentation (json) is automatically generated by the module.
Cons
You are no longer using straight up Express when you use this package. Your route definitions have to be defined through the Swagger module and this pulls you away from vanilla Express.
Swagger MANUAL Documentation Generation:
We just pulled swagger-ui into the project and wrote the documentation manually.
https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui
Pros
This approach decouples the documentation from the Express framework. Express endpoints are written as they normally would be written and the Swagger documentation is defined separate from the Express framework. Allows you to write pure express.
Cons
Documentation changes become a little more tedious due to the fact that you are manually writing and changing the yaml or json yourself. It's a little bit harder than just updating a few lines of code above a resource. This approach is also a little more prone to documentation typos and errors due to the fact it is entirely manually typed.
If you are planning to manually write your swagger documentation use the swagger editor below to validate your manual docs.
http://editor.swagger.io/#/
Conclusion
For this API project, we started out by auto-generating the documentation using the swagger-node-express package. However, we realized that decoupling the swagger documentation from the express library was important to enable us to use all the features and functionality of Express. I recommend manually writing the docs to have full control over both the Swagger documentation and the Express web framework that your app will use.
There is an option: you can embed middleware that will analyse all requests and responses and generate specification for you: https://github.com/mpashkovskiy/express-oas-generator
Then you can use it through your's app Swagger UI like http://host:port/api-docs
Yes !!!. You can use this awesome project typescript-test. Here is sample app. Clone it, run npm i,npm run swagger and go to /dist/swagger.json. Done. Swagger yaml and json is generated based on express routes !
With express-sitemap-html you may automatically generate a minimalistic Open API definition (only including route parameters) and install a Swagger UI for all routes of an existing express app. You only need:
const sitemap = require('express-sitemap-html')
...
sitemap.swagger('Your app name', app) // given that app is an express instance
Instead of analyzing HTTP requests at runtime, this approach inspects express app instance and mounted routes.
PROs you don't need to perform ahead requests to get an updated list of available routes.
CONs it provides untyped parameters features.
Have a look to swagger-jsdoc. It's a different approach.
The docs stick to the code, and also lets the express code to remain pure.
Guides:
https://dev.to/acanimal/express-api-with-autogenerated-openapi-doc-through-swagger-7na
https://dev.to/akshendra/generating-documentation-on-the-fly-in-express-2652
I've been playing with loopback and it has very nice API Explorer (somehow reminds me Java's JMX),
apparently it is integrated inside the framework itself.
Is there a simple way to recreate the same experience with any of the npm packages?
If not, how do you expose your API to clients side devs in a convenient way except a google doc?
A bit late to the party, but that's what Swagger is for.
Swagger-tools is particularly popular for Node.js and I can vouch for it!
You can use expressjs-api-explorer from here
But I guess you have to register all your routes into your root (app.js or server.js or similar) file.I have registered my routes into the separate module (eg. post.routes.js , users.routes.js) and in my app.js I have only one route for 'server:port/' i.e. app.get('/' ,handler) and expressjs-api-explorer returns only that one on the UI :
You need to also install "jade" as a dependency. Hope this helps.Cheers!