Vertex

Create mock API's and enrich them with some basic logic and simplify prototyping.

When to use Vertex?

You need to hack together a prototype with a REST API and you need to have some logic in your API's (when stubs are not enough) and you don't want to invest time into making a Express app with all the bells and whistles that comes with it.

Just point Vertex into folder where you have your static HTML app and endpoints and that's it.

Vertex provides developer with:

• static file server for serving your prototype HTML and JS code,
• embedded JavaScript interpreter so you can write endpoints in Javascript,
• localStorage implementation that stores everything into JSON file.

Watch this short video to get the gist of it.

Table of contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Writing endpoints
• Local storage
• Underscore.js
• Limitations

Installation

Download appropriate version from https://github.com/mitjafelicijan/vertex/releases and extract tarball.

If you want binary to be accessible from everywhere add path to the binary to your $PATH.

Usage

By nature vertex needs configuration file called vertex.yml. If this file doesn't exist in folder where vertex is executed application creates boilerplate configuration file.

Boilerplate configuration file:

vertex:

  # server settings
  host: 0.0.0.0
  port: 4001
  
  # api endpoint root
  prefix: /api/
  
  # database file location
  datastore: data.json
  
  # folder for html, css, js
  static: ./static
  
  # folder for rest api endpoints
  endpoints: ./endpoints

After file is found you can start Vertex with ./vertex and start using it.

Writing endpoints

Endpoints in Vertex are folders which contains:

• get.js,
• post.js,
• put.js,
• delete.js.

You add just the ones you need.

Example of a products endpoint:

• ./endpoints
  • ./products
    • get.js
    • post.js

Basic endpoint post.js.

(function () {

  var requestedQueryParams = JSON.parse(queryParams);
  console.log(requestedQueryParams.id, queryParams);

  var requestBody = JSON.parse(body);
  console.log(requestBody);

  return JSON.stringify(requestBody);

})();

For additional example you can download example project from release tab.

Local storage

In examples/test folder you have example for localStorage and how to use it.

Underscore.js

You can use Underscore.js in your endpoints. It is embedded with Vertex.

Limitations

• "use strict" will parse, but does nothing.
• The regular expression engine (re2/regexp) is not fully compatible with the ECMA5 specification.
• Targets ES5. ES6 features (eg: Typed Arrays) are not supported.
• No windows object so no setTimeout/setInterval support.