Hello everyone,
The meeting minutes for the Jaggery Routing discussion are given below;
*Objectives:*
The discussion centred around the implementation of Goose.js and its
viability as the de facto routing library for Jaggery.
Goose.js is a routing library [5] for Jaggery that assits in the creation
of REST APIs.
The areas examined included:
- Viability of adopting Goose.js *(Questions Raised)*
- Optimizations to Goose.js *(Suggestions)*
- Ideas to improve Goose.js *(Suggestions and Ideas)*
- A plan of action on adopting Goose *(Action Items)*
*Participants:*
- *Jaggery Team*: (Nuwan, Ruchira , Manu, Praveena ,Buddhi and Sameera)
- *Mobile Team: *(Chan [Dulitha] ,Shan and Dilshan )
*Questions Raised*
- Does Goose.js have the capability to handle request parameters in the
url?
- E.g. localhost/test/users?name=dulitha
- *Answer:* Goose supports request parameters, path parameters and
request.body parameters but they are all available through a
single object
(ctx). The problem arrives when someone has the same key for
path parameter
and request parameter - then one is going to get replaced. The proposed
architecture was to use three distinct objects - ctx.url, ctx.path,
ctx.body, ctx.files - as holders for the variables. This will be
implemented as a configuration since in most cases the developer using it
is intelligent to handle the duplication issue. Express.js part is not
necessary here.
- How do we specify routing logic in an external file?
- A single router instance is created in a front controller and then
passed to the subsequent scripts
- How do we handle situations such as api vs. /api where the slash adds
a different meaning to the url?
- *Answer:* route.get('',functio(ctxt) {});
- This approach might not be the most readable
*Suggestions:*
- Encourage the use of a single Goose.js router instance
- Goose.js should have the ability to automatically load routing logic
from scripts given a target folder. The framework should be able to iterate
through the scripts and load them ,thus eliminating the need for multiple
require statements. (Ideally implemented using a configuration block)
- The rendering logic should be abstracted away in order to ensure that
Goose.js handles only the routing logic.
- A suggestion was put forth to adopt a front controller pattern which
would eliminate the need to specify url mappings in the jaggery.conf. This
would effectively equate Jaggery functionality with Node (barring the
former been synchronous)
- An optimization step to the Goose.js involving a change to the require
logic.
- The scripts should be loaded once and only loaded again if the time
stamp has changed.
- Optimizations to the url passing
- Inspiration should be garnered from the algorithm used in the
existing URI matcher.
*Action Items:
*
1. The Goose.js library should be made available as a P2 module like
Caramel.
2. The Jaggery routing aspects should be moved to Goose.js by *Enterprise
Store* *Milestone 5*.
3. The Goose.js framework repository should be moved to the
jaggery-extensions repository and thus come under the purview of WSO2.
4. A notification should be posted both on the Goose.js site and the
Jaggery site offering it up as an alternative to the URI matcher
5. A research into the manner in which a package manager can be
implemented for Jaggery modules should be carried out
- *Possible Options:*
- An NPM style package management tool using a central repository of
modules
- A plug-in mechanism at the jaggery.conf level
- The use of GitHub modules (Eliminating the need to have the
Goose.js library as a
6. Augment more features into the URI matcher from the URI Matcher
specification [2].
*Ideas*
- A filtering mechanism used to inject logic before routes
- An augmentation to Goose.js in the form of a middle-ware approach
similar to connect.js where logic can be "plugged-in" at specific points of
execution.
*References*
[1] Express.js,A web application framework for NodeJS ,url:
http://expressjs.com/
[2] URI Template specification, url : http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6570
[3] NPM, Node Package Manager, url: https://npmjs.org/
[4] Connect, A middlware framework for NodeJS , url:
http://www.senchalabs.org/connect/
[5] Goose.js, A routing framework for Jaggery, url:
https://github.com/dulichan/goose.js
Thank You,
Sameera
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