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Introduction

Http Requests is the core of any web application. Warlock provides a simple and easy to use API to make HTTP requests.

Basic Usage​

Following the steps of Express and Fastify, Warlock uses the same concept of request and response objects.

So when you make a request, Warlock will create a request object that contains all the information about the request, and a response object that contains all the information about the response.

Let's see a simple example

src/app/general/routes.ts
import { router, Request, Response } from "@warlock.js/core";

router.get("/", (request: Request, response: Response) => {
  return response.success({
    message: "Hello World",
  });
});

Nothing special here, we just created a simple route that returns a success response with a message Hello World.

How it works​

Simply, we define our app routes to define which handlers will be executed when a request is made to a specific route.

When a request is made, Warlock will check if there is a route that matches the request URL, if there is a match, then it will execute the handler and return the response.

Middleware​

Middleware is a function that will be executed before the handler, it's used to modify the request or the response, or to execute some code before the handler.

So we can define the http cycle as follows:

  1. Define the routes
  2. Execute the middleware (if exists)
  3. Execute the handler that receives the request and returns the response
  4. Send the response

Handler Or Controller?​

Both has the same meaning, we prefer to use the term request handler but for more other programming languages standards, we store all handlers inside the controllers directory.

Function Handlers VS Class Handlers​

In such programming language as Typescript (Yes typescript not javascript), we can use both paradigms, so let's see the difference between them.

Using Handlers​

Handlers are great for simple routes that does a simple task and for decoupling the code, it makes perfect sense to use it for a login route for instance, we just need to validate the request and return the response.

Using Class Handlers​

In Warlock, we prefer using classes when it comes to RESTful APIs, because it makes it easier to maintain the code and to add more features to the same route.

That's why we introduced Restful Classes that makes it easier to create a RESTful API with around 6 routes in a single class.