Node.js, restify and proper routing

Question

I'm still wrapping my head around Node, but I have a very simple question. I see a lot of node examples where people are declaring their routes and all their logic in a single app.js file (or sometimes splitting them off into subfiles).

My question is basically: is it better to keep all your route declarations in the app or bootstrap a generic route that maps to your file structure. This may seem like a primitive question but my goal is to grasp what's most efficient within node.

I'm currently building an API handler with Restify but I have another app that uses Express (so this question will likely answer both questions).

In my route I can either declare a single route bootstrap like so:

app.all('/api/:package/:controller', function(request, response) {
    var controller = require(
        '../' + request.params.package + '/api/' + request.params.controller
    );
    controller.index(request, response);
    response.end();
});

This basically accepts all calls from the API and targets the proper api controller. Alternatively I can declare each route individually or perhaps even write an loop that goes through each of my controllers and declares them on init. So:

for (var i in packages.controllers) {
    app.all('api/' + package + '/' + controllers[i].name, function(request, response) {
       var controller = require(
           '../' + request.params.package + '/api/' + request.params.controller
       );
       controller.index(request, response);
    }
}

packages.controllers being an array of all possible controllers. Note the above code is not accurate, I have an HMVC folder structure so the code is a bit more complicated than the above. But you get the point.

I'm wondering what the consequences of either are and if it really matters at all?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I would not recommend a single app.js at all. You will end up with a 5,000+ line file which is a nightmare to maintain.

The largest issue I see with your snippet is that even though require() gets cached, it has to perform a synchronous IO request. It's just a bad habit to get into.

Similar to what Don recommends, I have had the best luck splitting out routes into modules which export a single function which accept an instance of the app. You can think of it as "decorating" the app instance:

// app.js
var app = express.createServer();
app.configure(function(){ //... });

require('./foo')(app);

// foo.js
exports = module.exports = function(app){

    app.get('/whatever', function(req, res){});

};

Answer 2

The exploding app.js file prompted a couple of us to create a small reference app to codify a standard Express app structure. It's not rocket science, but rather a set of conventions that makes things more organized.

You can find it here: https://github.com/EAAppFoundry/tableau

We'd love suggestions/pull requests if there something we got wrong or is missing.