Define Fastify Routes

HarperDB’s applications provide an extension for loading Fastify routes as a way to handle endpoints. While we generally recommend building your endpoints/APIs with HarperDB's REST interface for better performance and standards compliance, Fastify's route can provide an extensive API for highly customized path handling. Below is a very simple example of a route declaration.

The fastify route handler can be configured in your application's config.yaml (this is the default config if you used the application template):

fastifyRoutes: # This loads files that define fastify routes using fastify's auto-loader
  files: routes/*.js # specify the location of route definition modules
  path: . # relative to the app-name, like  http://server/app-name/route-name

By default, route URLs are configured to be:

• [Instance URL]:[HTTP Port]/[Project Name]/[Route URL]

However, you can specify the path to be / if you wish to have your routes handling the root path of incoming URLs.

• The route below, using the default config, within the dogs project, with a route of breeds would be available at http://localhost:9926/dogs/breeds.

In effect, this route is just a pass-through to HarperDB. The same result could have been achieved by hitting the core HarperDB API, since it uses hdbCore.preValidation and hdbCore.request, which are defined in the “helper methods” section, below.

export default async (server, { hdbCore, logger }) => {
    server.route({
        url: '/',
        method: 'POST',
        preValidation: hdbCore.preValidation,
        handler: hdbCore.request,
    })
}

Custom Handlers

For endpoints where you want to execute multiple operations against HarperDB, or perform additional processing (like an ML classification, or an aggregation, or a call to a 3rd party API), you can define your own logic in the handler. The function below will execute a query against the dogs table, and filter the results to only return those dogs over 4 years in age.

IMPORTANT: This route has NO preValidation and uses hdbCore.requestWithoutAuthentication, which- as the name implies- bypasses all user authentication. See the security concerns and mitigations in the “helper methods” section, below.

export default async (server, { hdbCore, logger }) => {
    server.route({
        url: '/:id',
        method: 'GET',
        handler: (request) => {
            request.body= {
                operation: 'sql',
                sql: `SELECT * FROM dev.dog WHERE id = ${request.params.id}`
            };

          const result = await hdbCore.requestWithoutAuthentication(request);
          return result.filter((dog) => dog.age > 4);
        }
    });
}

Custom preValidation Hooks

The simple example above was just a pass-through to HarperDB- the exact same result could have been achieved by hitting the core HarperDB API. But for many applications, you may want to authenticate the user using custom logic you write, or by conferring with a 3rd party service. Custom preValidation hooks let you do just that.

Below is an example of a route that uses a custom validation hook:

import customValidation from '../helpers/customValidation';

export default async (server, { hdbCore, logger }) => {
    server.route({
        url: '/:id',
        method: 'GET',
        preValidation: (request) => customValidation(request, logger),
        handler: (request) => {
            request.body= {
                operation: 'sql',
                sql: `SELECT * FROM dev.dog WHERE id = ${request.params.id}`
            };

         return hdbCore.requestWithoutAuthentication(request);
        }
    });
}

Notice we imported customValidation from the helpers directory. To include a helper, and to see the actual code within customValidation, see Define Helpers.

Helper Methods

When declaring routes, you are given access to 2 helper methods: hdbCore and logger.

hdbCore

hdbCore contains three functions that allow you to authenticate an inbound request, and execute operations against HarperDB directly, by passing the standard Operations API.

• preValidation

  This is an array of functions used for fastify authentication. The second function takes the authorization header from the inbound request and executes the same authentication as the standard HarperDB Operations API (for example, hdbCore.preValidation[1](req, resp, callback)). It will determine if the user exists, and if they are allowed to perform this operation. If you use the request method, you have to use preValidation to get the authenticated user.

• request

  This will execute a request with HarperDB using the operations API. The request.body should contain a standard HarperDB operation and must also include the hdb_user property that was in request.body provided in the callback.

• requestWithoutAuthentication

  Executes a request against HarperDB without any security checks around whether the inbound user is allowed to make this request. For security purposes, you should always take the following precautions when using this method:

  • Properly handle user-submitted values, including url params. User-submitted values should only be used for search_value and for defining values in records. Special care should be taken to properly escape any values if user-submitted values are used for SQL.

logger

This helper allows you to write directly to the log file, hdb.log. It’s useful for debugging during development, although you may also use the console logger. There are 5 functions contained within logger, each of which pertains to a different logging.level configuration in your harperdb-config.yaml file.

• logger.trace(‘Starting the handler for /dogs’)

• logger.debug(‘This should only fire once’)

• logger.warn(‘This should never ever fire’)

• logger.error(‘This did not go well’)

• logger.fatal(‘This did not go very well at all’)