derbyjs for REST API

Question

First of all, I have seen this question: How to best create a RESTful API in Node.js and it has pointed me towards mers, which has been a great help. But I have also been reading a lot of good things about derbyjs and it does look really interesting. So my questions, does it make sense to use derbyjs for ceating a REST API (real-time features might be useful in the future, but not a 100% certain at this pont.)? And is it any better or worse than mers? I am really grateful for any help.

Edit: If anyone is interested, decided now to use sails.js: http://sailsjs.org/

Answer 1

The strength of Derby is that the same views (i.e. rendering templates into HTML) can be executed on the client as well as on the server. So for building a webapp, you won't have to explicitly code a REST API and then use it from the client-side JavaScript, instead you just write your views and Derby does the rest.

So if you're looking into making a REST API only (as your question states) and no HTML, there is no advantage in using Derby. It's the wrong tool for the job.

Answer 2

It depends on what you're looking for exactly. Derby.js is built on top of Express.js which has excellent support for creating a REST API. This also means that anything you can do in Express, you could also do in Derby. If you want real-time features, and the ability to build out a REST API, Derby.js is an excellent choice. It's also one of the reasons that people recommend Derby over something like Meteor (currently Meteor does not have support for REST endpoints, but it will hopefully in the future so also something you might want to keep your eye on, if you're in the market for real-time framework). However, if you're not looking for a node framework with an emphasis on real-time functionality, Derby is not the right choice. I would however recommend looking into Express.js to build a REST API. We use it currently for that purpose and it works really well. There are also a number of libraries and packages that play nicely with Express, so in the future if your needs change, it's easy to find something that works well with Express.

Anyway, I would recommend checking out some basic tutorials for how to create a REST API in Express because once you're able to successfully do that, adding some of the real-time features of Derby.js is fairly straightforward.

Basic tutorial on creating a REST API in Express. http://coenraets.org/blog/2012/10/creating-a-rest-api-using-node-js-express-and-mongodb/