Rhino 🦏 - The Framework for scalable APIs.

🎉 RC-2 introduced out-of-the-box support for parsing JSON and Form data from the request body, as well as the ability to send files to the client in the response body. Check out the highlights! 🎉

Rhino is an Angular-inspired framework for creating scalable REST-APIs. It provides a route-endpoint architecture that takes advantage of the many features provided by the TypeScript language. It encourages a project structure that is self-described and consistent, so that programmers within the project can collaborate seamlessly.

Rhino comes with five different modules for strong REST-API creation:

• @Rhino_Server - Class Decorator: Creates a new server.
• RhinoRouter - Class: Defines the routes and endpoints for a server.
• @Rhino_Endpoint - Class Decorator: Defines an endpoint handler.
• @Rhino_Hook - Class Decorator: Defines a middleware that can be hooked to the request-response middleware pipeline.
• @Rhino_Error - Class Decorator: Defines an error handler.

Hello World

Step 1) Create a Server

Crete a file named server.ts, then copy and paste the following code inside it.

import {
    Rhino_Server, OnServerListening,
    ServerOptions, RunServers
} from "https://deno.land/x/rhino/mod.ts";

// The server's router (next step)
import { myRouter } from  './router.ts';

// Creates a server
@Rhino_Server({
    port: 3200,
    router: myRouter
})
export class myServer implements OnServerListening {
    /** Executes once the server starts listening to requests */
    public onListening(app: ServerOptions) {
        console.log(`\nListening to request made to ${app.hostname}:${app.port}`)
    }
}

/**
 * Runs all the servers for this application.
 * (A single application can have multiple servers)
 */
RunServers([myServer]);

Step 2) Create a Router

Create a file named router.ts, then copy and paste the following code inside it.

import { RhinoRouter } from "https://deno.land/x/rhino/mod.ts";

// Creates a new router
const ROUTER = new RhinoRouter();

// Endpoints (next step)
import { helloWorld } from "./hello_world.endpoint.ts";

// Mounts the helloWorld endpoint to the root of the server
ROUTER.addEndpoint(helloWorld);

// Exports the router
export const myRouter = ROUTER;

Step 3) Create an Endpoint

Create a file named hello_world.endpoint.ts, then copy and paste the following code inside it.

import {
    Rhino_Endpoint, OnEndpointCalled, RhinoRequest,
    RhinoResponse, NextHook, NextError, HttpMethod, MIMEType
} from "https://deno.land/x/rhino/mod.ts";


@Rhino_Endpoint({
    path: "/hello", // The path for this endpoint
    method: HttpMethod.GET, // This endpoint will only listen to GET requests
})
export class helloWorld implements OnEndpointCalled {

    // The constructor accepts the following parameters (in that order):
    // The Request Object,
    // The Response Object,
    // The Next Hook function (middlewares of type "After"), and
    // The Error function
    constructor(
        private req: RhinoRequest,
        private res: RhinoResponse,
        private next: NextHook,
        private error: NextError
    ) { }

    /** Executed when this endpoint is requested */
    public onEndpointCall() {
        // Sets the content type, and sends data to the client
        this.res.contentType(MIMEType.TextHTML).send("<h1>Hello Rhinos 🦏!</h1>");
    }
}

Open a command line and run $ deno run -c ./tsconfig.json --allow-net server.ts.

NOTE: Using Rhino requires the "experimentalDecorators": true in your project’s tsconfig.json file.

Finally, navigate to localhost:3200/hello to be greeted by your newly created Rhino server.

Scalability

You may be wondering, why so many files for a simple “hello world” project? The answer lies in scalability. Most real-world REST-APIs do not have a single file for all their code. Instead, the code is split into many files, folders, and sub-folders to create a robust application. Rhino takes care of all the thinking that goes behind defining a folder structure for your project by encouraging code refraction. To see an example of a simple Rhino project, visit the _example folder.

NOTE: This project is still on its (very) early stages, and the definitions are subject to change.