CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsrest
AljoSt
AljoSt

Reputation: 439

Call REST Api from within REST Api (Node.js)

This might be a silly question but I'm quite new to Node/REST and could not find a answer.

Say there is a Request A that asks for Object A ('../student/:studentId'). And there is another Request B that asks for Object B ('.../lecture/:lectureid'). Now Object B will contain some information about the lecture but also the students that attend the lecture.

Now I can think of three possbile ways to assemble Object B:

1.: Call Request A several times from within the processing of Resquest B

2.: Copy and paste the code from the processing of Request A

3.: Create an object that accesses the database and attach it to all request queries:

    var dbAccessObject = require('./dbAccess');

    app.use(function (req,res,next){
      req.dbAccessObject = dbAccessObject;
      next();
    )};

Which option would you choose? Or is there another, better way?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 151

Answers (1)

Jxx
Jxx

Reputation: 1064

You don't need to forward requests to yourself. You can handle it within your own code by structuring it nicely. Let's say you have two API routes:

/a: runA();
/b: runB();

And you would like /c to return the result of both /a and /b as if two calls were made. If you have broken your logic down to runA() and runB() as above, then /c becomes runC():

return {
  a: runA(),
  b: runB()
}

This is simple when writing synchronous code, but asynchronous code is a bit more difficult because runB() could return before runA(); you need to know when they are both finished. I recommend using the async library for this as a quick win: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2265406&seqNum=2

Upvotes: 2

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