Rhino 🦏 - The Framework for scalable APIs.

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>");
    }
}

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 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.