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JavaScript

Posted by Aleks Dahlberg
Aleks Dahlberg
19,103 Points

How to do DRY routers in express

I am building a webapp in the form of a network of sorts with basic CRUD actions. I am in the process of splitting up my router files as they are becoming rather large.

I have an 'actions' route which does things such as selecting an in individual post to view, voting on a post, viewing a profile and commending a user. I cannot seem to find a way to allow me to split these 'action' routes into a seperate file and then use them as needed in the main route.

//index.js file in routes folder 
var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

//main route
router.route('/feed')
    .get(function(req, res, next){
    //some code here
    }

//actions.js file in routes folder
var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

//vote route
router.route('/vote/:id')
    .post(function(req, res, next){
    //some code here
    }

//item route
router.route('/item/:id')
    .get(function(req, res, next){
    //some code here
    }

I'd like to be able to use the action routes inside of the feed routes (and other routes) So I can do things like 

POST /feed/vote/postid12356
GET /feed/item/itemid123456

or even in another route called 'private-feed' using the same actions from the actions route

POST /private-feed/vote/postid12356
GET /private-feed/item/itemid123456

Without having to have these actions repeated in many routes.

Is there any way in express that this can be done?

1 Answer

Aleks Dahlberg
Aleks Dahlberg
19,103 Points

Solved:

I created a new folder called 'controllers' then a file within that called action.js. In that file I made some methods:

//action.js
module.exports = {
     getItem: (req, res, next) => {
          //do stuff for grabbing a single post
     },

     vote: (req, res, next) => {
         //do stuff for creating a vote
     }
}

Then in the index.js route file:

//index.js
var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();
var ActionController = require("../controllers/action"); //import action.js

router.route('/feed/item/:id').post(ActionController.getItem); //new route for getting an item
router.route('/feed/vote/:id').post(ActionController.vote); //new route for making a vote

//export router
module.exports = router;