Powahroot: Client and Server-side routing in Javascript

If I want to really understand something, I usually end up implementing it myself. This is the case with my latest library - powahroot, but also because I didn't really like the way any of the alternatives functioned because I'm picky.

Originally I wrote it for this project (although it's actually for a little satellite project that isn't open-source unfortunately - maybe at some point in the future!) - but I liked it so much that I decided that I had to turn it into a full library that I could share here.

In short, a routing framework helps you get requests handled in the right places in your application. I've actually blogged about this before, so I'd recommend you go and read that post first before continuing with this one.

For all the similarities between the server side (as mentioned in my earlier post) and the client side, the 2 environments are different enough that they warrant having 2 distinctly separate routers. In powahroot, I provide both a ServerRouter and a ClientRouter.

The ServerRouter is designed to handle Node.js HTTP request and response objects. It provides shortcut methods .get(), .post(), and others to quickly create routes for different request types - and also supports middleware to enable logical separation of authentication, request processing, and response generation.

The ClientRouter, on the other hand, is essentially a stripped-down version of the ServerRouter that's tailored to functioning in a browser environment. It doesn't support middleware (yet?), but it does support the pushstate that's part of the History API.

I've also published it on npm, so you can install it like this:

npm install --save powahroot

Then you can use it like this:

# On the server
import ServerRouter from 'powahroot/Server.mjs';

// ....

const router = new ServerRouter();
router.on_all(async (context, next) => { console.debug(context.url); await next()})
router.get("/files/::filepath", (context, _next) => context.send.plain(200, `You requested ${context.params.filepath}`));
// .....

# On the client
import ClientRouter from 'powahroot/Client.mjs';

// ....

const router = new ClientRouter({
    // Options object. Default settings:
    verbose: false, // Whether to be verbose in console.log() messages
    listen_pushstate: true, // Whether to react to browser pushstate events (excluding those generated by powahroot itself, because that would cause an infinite loop :P)
});

As you can see, powahroot uses ES6 Modules, which makes it easy to split up your code into separate independently-operating sections.

In addition, I've also generated some documentation with the documentation tool on npm. It details the API available to you, and should serve as a good reference when using the library.

You can find that here: https://starbeamrainbowlabs.com/code/powahroot/docs/

It's automatically updated via continuous integration and continuous deployment, which I really do need to get around to blogging about (I've spent a significant amount of time setting up the base system upon which powahroot's CI and CD works. In short I use Laminar CI and a GitHub Webhook, but there's a lot of complicated details).

Found this interesting? Used it in your own project? Got an idea to improve powahroot? Comment below!