Syntaxe middleware for Express.js and Nest.js

Syntaxe is a declarative data querying library inspired by graphql.

PLEASE REFER TO THE ORIGINAL SYNTAXE DOCUMENTATION FOR A MORE DETAILED COVERAGE OF THE SYNTAXE SCHEMA AND ITS OPERATORS.

Syntaxe Express is a middleware built on the original syntaxe engine to support declarative data fetching and querying when building server applications with express.js or nest.js.

Installation

Setup

npm install syntaxe-express

Example

Server

Express (ESM)

import express from 'express';

import SyntaxeIO from 'syntaxe-express';

const app = express();

const users = [
  {
    "id": 1,
    "fullName": "Person 1",
    "lastLogin": "2020-03-03T06:39:55.795Z",
    "package": "free"
  },
  {
    "id": 2,
    "fullName": "Person 2",
    "lastLogin": "2023-08-29T04:31:09.580Z",
    "package": "premium"
  }
]

////////////////////////////
// Add syntaxe middleware //
////////////////////////////
SyntaxeIO.init({
  enabled: true,
  app: app
});

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.status(200).json({
    message: 'This is a syntaxe-enabled express.js application.'
  });
});

app.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  res.status(200).json(users);
});

const port = 8000;

app.listen(port, () =>
  console.log(`Express app listening on port 8000.`));

Express (CommonJs)

const express = require('express');

const SyntaxeIO = require('syntaxe-express');

const app = express();

////////////////////////////
// Add syntaxe middleware //
////////////////////////////
SyntaxeIO.init({
  enabled: true,
  app: app
});

Nest

import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core';
import { AppModule } from './app.module';

import * as SyntaxeIO from 'syntaxe-express';

async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);

  ////////////////////////////
  // Add syntaxe middleware //
  ////////////////////////////
  SyntaxeIO.init({
    enabled: true,
    app: app
  });
  
  await app.listen(8000);
}
bootstrap();

Client

const response = await fetch('http://127.0.0.1:8000/users', {
  method: 'GET',
  headers: {
    'Syntaxe-Resolve-Schema': btoa(`{
      id
      fullName [as:"name"]
      package? [ne:"free"]
    } [first:5]`)
  }
});
const result = await response.json();

/*
Response Headers:
Syntaxe-Enabled: true
Syntaxe-Schema-Resolved: true

Response Data:
[
  { id: 2, name: 'Person 3' }
]
*/

Usage

Availability

The first thing to look out for when communicating with a Syntaxe-enabled server application is the availability header Syntaxe-Enabled, which indicates whether Syntaxe is enabled for the application and ready to process queries sent from the client or not.

The Syntaxe middleware always returns the availability header Syntaxe-Enabled once hooked to your nest application.

The value of the header is the value set to the enabled config property.

Request

When making a query request from a client, there are two important commandments to note 😃:

• You shall include the header that holds your query schema - Syntaxe-Resolve-Schema.
• You shall convert your query schema to a base64 string, which should be the value of the header.

Response

When a Syntaxe-enabled server returns a response, it returns one or two additional headers. The number of headers returned is based on the status of the query operation.

• When the query is successful, the additional header returned is Syntaxe-Schema-Resolved which has the value true.
• When the query fails, the two additional headers returned are Syntaxe-Schema-Resolved which has the value false, and also Syntaxe-Schema-Resolved-Error which contains some information on why the query failed.

Support and Feedback

If you find any bugs or inconsistency, please submit an issue here in GitHub.

If you have any issues using the library, please contact me by email lolu.sholar@gmail.com with the subject 'Problem Using Syntaxe-Express'.

You are welcome to contribute or participate in making the library better.

NOTE: Development of this library in various technologies, such as PHP, C#, Java, Python, and others, is currently ongoing, with support for both standalone and REST API usage.

License

The MIT License (MIT)