REQRELAY

$ npm install req.relay

Middleware have one major drawback.

Nodejs middleware handle requests via side effects, and it makes error handling a real bummer. REQRELAY let's you use pure-er functions that throw or return. Just pass a set of plaino req+res handlers to REQRELAY and it binds them into an asynchronous chain, so they do the same work as middleware, but without the baggage.

function myHandler(req, res) {
  if (!condition) throw new Error('500: Bad!')
  return db.insert(value)
}

REQRELAY(myHandler, handler2, handlerN)

myHandler simply throws when it encounters an error—there is no next(). REQRELAY will catch the error and pass it to its default error handler, or to an error handler you've defined. No more node server crashes means no more managing clusters.

Simple, Flexible API

Pass handler functions to REQRELAY as a list:

REQRELAY(handler1, handler2, handlerN)

Optionally specify a URI path condition:

REQRELAY(handler1, handler2, handlerN)('/some-path/')

Each handler is of the form:

function(req, res) {
  // You may:
  // - throw an error
  // - return an ordinary value
  // - return a promise
  // - implicitly return undefined
}

When the handler has finished work (sync or async), if res.headersSent is false, the next function runs, and so on until the headers are sent, or there are no handler functions left.

Error Handling

If there is an uncaught error, REQRELAY will catch it and pass it to its error catch handler. You can customize each relay's error handler as follows:

REQRELAY.onError = function (req, res, err) {
  res.end('Error!')
}

Nest, mix, and compose.

REQRELAY(
  REQRELAY(publicSite),
  auth,
  REQRELAY(admin1, admin2)('/admin/'),
  REQRELAY(api1, api2)('/api/'),
  notFound
)

Use it with plain nodejs.

const http = require('http')
const REQRELAY = require('req.relay')
const myHandler1 = require('./...')
const myHandler2 = require('./...')

const relay = REQRELAY(myHandler1, myHandler2)
http.createServer(relay).listen(3000)

Use it with ExpressJS.

You can use REQRELAY with ExpressJS to take advantage of everything the community offers, while writing your own handlers in a more rarefied way. For example:

const express = require('express')
const REQRELAY = require('req.relay')
const compression = require('compression')
const myHandler1 = require('./...')
const myHandler2 = require('./...')
const app = express()

// Third party middleware:
app.use(compression)

// return-throw-friendly handlers:
const relay = REQRELAY(myHandler1, myHandler2)
app.use(relay)
app.listen(3000)