@liveblocks/zenrouter

Zen Router is an opinionated API router with batteries included, encouraging patterns that remain maintainable as your application grows.

Installation

npm i @liveblocks/zenrouter

Purpose

The main purpose of this router is to implement an API backend.

Quick start

import { object, string } from "decoders";
import { Router } from "@liveblocks/zenrouter";

const zen = new Router(/* ... */);

zen.route(
  "GET /greet/<name>",

  ({ p }) => ({ result: `Hi, ${p.name}!` })
);

zen.route(
  "POST /greet",

  object({ name: string }),

  ({ body }) => ({
    result: `Hi, ${body.name}!`,
  })
);

export default zen;

The Zen Router pipeline

Principles

Pragmatic

• Implementing real-world endpoints should be joyful, easy, and type-safe.
• All requests and responses are JSON by default.
• All error responses have at least an { error } key with a human-readable string.
• You can throw any HTTP error to short-circuit a non-2xx response.
• JSON error responses for all known HTTP status codes, customizable per status code.
• CORS support is built-in with a sane { cors: true } default that applies to all endpoints in the router. OPTIONS routes and responses are managed automatically.

Secure by default

• All requests must be authorized. Authorization is opt-out, not opt-in.
• All path params are verified and type-safe (/foo/<bar>/<qux> available as p.bar and p.qux), cannot be empty, and are URI-decoded automatically.
• Input JSON bodies of POST requests must be validated, and are made available as a fully-type safe body in the handler.
• All query strings are type-safely accessible (/foo?abc=hi as q.abc).

Maintainable

• All route patterns are static, fully qualified, and thus greppable. No "base" prefix URL setup, which in practice makes codebases harder to navigate over time.
• Routes include the method in the definition (zen.route("POST /v2/foo/bar") instead of zen.post("/v2/foo/bar")).
• No complex middlewares. Only the request context and auth functions can carry data alongside a request. No per-route middlewares, no monkey-patching of the request object.
• Default error handling is configurable per status code; individual handlers can always bypass it by throwing a custom Response.

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0, Copyright © 2021-present Liveblocks.

See LICENSE for more information.