Restify CheatSheet. More: http://journal.gentlenode.com/node-3-restify-cheatsheet/

1-restify-server-cheatsheet.js

// Restify Server CheatSheet.
// More about the API: http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#server-api
// Install restify with npm install restify


// 1.1. Creating a Server.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Creating-a-Server


var restify = require('restify');

// A restify server has the following properties on it: name, version, log, acceptable, url.
// And the following methods: address(), listen(port, [host], [callback]), close(), pre(), use().
var server = restify.createServer({
  certificate: null,     // If you want to create an HTTPS server, pass in the PEM-encoded certificate and key
  key: null,             // If you want to create an HTTPS server, pass in the PEM-encoded certificate and key
  formatters: null,      //  Custom response formatters for res.send()
  log: null,             // You can optionally pass in a bunyan instance; not required
  name: 'node-api',      // By default, this will be set in the Server response header, default is restify
  spdy: null,            // Any options accepted by node-spdy
  version: '1.1.3',      // A default version to set for all routes
  handleUpgrades: false  // Hook the upgrade event from the node HTTP server, pushing Connection: Upgrade requests through the regular request handling chain; defaults to false
});

server.listen(3000, function () {
  console.log('%s listening at %s', server.name, server.url);
});

// You can change what headers restify sends by default by setting the top-level property defaultResponseHeaders. This should be a function that takes one argument data, which is the already serialized response body.
// data can be either a String or Buffer (or null). The this object will be the response itself.
restify.defaultResponseHeaders = function(data) {
  this.header('Server', 'helloworld');
};

restify.defaultResponseHeaders = false; // disable altogether


// 1.2. Server API Event Emitters.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Server-API


// Restify servers emit all the events from the node http.Server and has several other events you want to listen on.
// http://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/http.html#http_class_http_server

server.on('NotFound', function (request, response, cb) {});              // When a client request is sent for a URL that does not exist, restify will emit this event. Note that restify checks for listeners on this event, and if there are none, responds with a default 404 handler. It is expected that if you listen for this event, you respond to the client.
server.on('MethodNotAllowed', function (request, response, cb) {});      // When a client request is sent for a URL that does exist, but you have not registered a route for that HTTP verb, restify will emit this event. Note that restify checks for listeners on this event, and if there are none, responds with a default 405 handler. It is expected that if you listen for this event, you respond to the client.
server.on('VersionNotAllowed', function (request, response, cb) {});     // When a client request is sent for a route that exists, but does not match the version(s) on those routes, restify will emit this event. Note that restify checks for listeners on this event, and if there are none, responds with a default 400 handler. It is expected that if you listen for this event, you respond to the client.
server.on('UnsupportedMediaType', function (request, response, cb) {});  // When a client request is sent for a route that exist, but has a content-type mismatch, restify will emit this event. Note that restify checks for listeners on this event, and if there are none, responds with a default 415 handler. It is expected that if you listen for this event, you respond to the client.
server.on('after', function (request, response, route, error) {});       // Emitted after a route has finished all the handlers you registered. You can use this to write audit logs, etc. The route parameter will be the Route object that ran.
server.on('uncaughtException', function (request, response, route, error) {});  // Emitted when some handler throws an uncaughtException somewhere in the chain. The default behavior is to just call res.send(error), and let the built-ins in restify handle transforming, but you can override to whatever you want here.


// 1.3. Request API.
// Wraps all of the node http.IncomingMessage APIs, events and properties, plus the following.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Request-API


req.header(key, [defaultValue]);  // Get the case-insensitive request header key, and optionally provide a default value (express-compliant).
req.accepts(type);                // Check if the Accept header is present, and includes the given type.
req.is(type);                     // Check if the incoming request contains the Content-Type header field, and it contains the give mime type.
req.isSecure();                   // Check if the incoming request is encrypted.
req.isChunked();                  // Check if the incoming request is chunked.
req.isKeepAlive();                // Check if the incoming request is kept alive.
req.log;                          // Note that you can piggyback on the restify logging framework, by just using req.log
req.getLogger(component);         // Shorthand to grab a new bunyan instance that is a child component of the one restify has.
req.time();                       // The time when this request arrived (ms since epoch).

req.contentLength;  // Short hand for the header content-length.
req.contentType;    // Short hand for the header content-type.
req.href;           // url.parse(req.url) href
req.log;            // Bunyan logger you can piggyback on
req.id;             // A unique request id (x-request-id)
req.path;           // Cleaned up URL path


// 1.4. Response API.
// Wraps all of the node ServerResponse APIs, events and properties, plus the following.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Response-API


res.header(key, value);        // Get or set the response header key.
res.charSet(type);             // Appends the provided character set to the response's Content-Type.
res.cache([type], [options]);  // Sets the cache-control header. type defaults to _public_, and options currently only takes maxAge.
res.status(code);              // Sets the response statusCode.
res.send([status], body);      // You can use send() to wrap up all the usual writeHead(), write(), end() calls on the HTTP API of node. You can pass send either a code and body, or just a body.  body can be an Object, a Buffer, or an Error. When you call send(), restify figures out how to format the response (see content-negotiation, above), and does that.
res.json([status], body);      // Short-hand for: res.contentType = 'json'; res.send({hello: 'world'});

res.code;           // HTTP status code.
res.contentLength;  // Short hand for the header content-length.
res.contentType;    // Short hand for the header content-type.
res.headers;        // Response headers.
res.id;             // A unique request id (x-request-id).


// 2.1. Common Handlers.
// A restify server has a use() method that takes handlers of the form function (req, res, next). Note that restify runs handlers in the order they are registered on a server, so if you want some common handlers to run before any of your routes, issue calls to use() before defining routes. Note that in all calls to use() and the routes below, you can pass in any combination of direct functions (function(res, res, next)) and arrays of functions ([function(req, res, next)]).
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Common-handlers:-server.use()


server.use(function slowHandler(req, res, next) {
  setTimeout(function() {
    return next();
  }, 250);
});


// 2.2. Bundle Plugins.
// Also, restify ships with several handlers you can use.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Bundled-Plugins


server.use(restify.acceptParser(server.acceptable));  // Parses out the Accept header, and ensures that the server can respond to what the client asked for. You almost always want to just pass in server.acceptable here, as that's an array of content types the server knows how to respond to (with the formatters you've registered). If the request is for a non-handled type, this plugin will return an error of 406.
server.use(restify.authorizationParser());  // Parses out the Authorization header as best restify can. Currently only HTTP Basic Auth and HTTP Signature schemes are supported. When this is used, req.authorization will be set to something like:
server.use(restify.CORS());                 // Supports tacking CORS headers into actual requests (as defined by the spec). Note that preflight requests are automatically handled by the router, and you can override the default behavior on a per-URL basis with server.opts(:url, ...).
server.use(restify.dateParser());           // Parses out the HTTP Date header (if present) and checks for clock skew (default allowed clock skew is 300s, like Kerberos). You can pass in a number, which is interpreted in seconds, to allow for clock skew.
server.use(restify.queryParser());          // Parses the HTTP query string (i.e., /foo?id=bar&name=mark). If you use this, the parsed content will always be available in req.query, additionally params are merged into req.params. You can disable by passing in mapParams: false in the options object.
server.use(restify.jsonp());                // Supports checking the query string for callback or jsonp and ensuring that the content-type is appropriately set if JSONP params are in place. There is also a default application/javascript formatter to handle this. You should set the queryParser plugin to run before this, but if you don't this plugin will still parse the query string properly.
server.use(restify.gzipResponse());         // If the client sends an accept-encoding: gzip header (or one with an appropriate q-val), then the server will automatically gzip all response data. Note that only gzip is supported, as this is most widely supported by clients in the wild.
server.use(restify.bodyParser());           // Blocks your chain on reading and parsing the HTTP request body. Switches on Content-Type and does the appropriate logic. application/json, application/x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data are currently supported.
server.use(restify.requestLogger());        // Sets up a child bunyan logger with the current request id filled in, along with any other parameters you define.
server.use(restify.throttle());             // Restify ships with a fairly comprehensive implementation of Token bucket, with the ability to throttle on IP (or x-forwarded-for) and username (from req.username). You define "global" request rate and burst rate, and you can define overrides for specific keys. Note that you can always place this on per-URL routes to enable different request rates to different resources (if for example, one route, like /my/slow/database is much easier to overwhlem than /my/fast/memcache).
server.use(restify.conditionalRequest());   // You can use this handler to let clients do nice HTTP semantics with the "match" headers. Specifically, with this plugin in place, you would set res.etag=$yourhashhere, and then this plugin will do one of: return 304 (Not Modified) [and stop the handler chain], return 412 (Precondition Failed) [and stop the handler chain], Allow the request to go through the handler chain.
server.use(restify.fullResponse());         // sets up all of the default headers for the system
server.use(restify.bodyParser());           // remaps the body content of a request to the req.params variable, allowing both GET and POST/PUT routes to use the same interface


// 3. Routing.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Routing


// You are responsible for calling next() in order to run the next handler in the chain.
function send(req, res, next) {
  res.send('hello ' + req.params.name);
  return next();
}
 
function rm(req, res, next) {
  res.send(204);
  return next('foo2');
}
 
server.post('/hello', send);
server.put('/hello', send);
server.get('/hello/:name', send);
server.head('/hello/:name', send);
server.del('hello/:name', rm);

// You can also pass in a RegExp object and access the capture group with req.params (which will not be interpreted in any way).
server.get(/^\/([a-zA-Z0-9_\.~-]+)\/(.*)/, function(req, res, next) {
  console.log(req.params[0]);
  console.log(req.params[1]);
  res.send(200);
  return next();
});

// You can pass in a string name to next(), and restify will lookup that route, and assuming it exists will run the chain from where you left off.
server.get({
  name: 'foo2',
  path: '/foo/:id'
}, function (req, res, next) {
  assert.equal(count, 1);
  res.send(200);
  next();
});

// Routes can also accept more than one handler function.
server.get(
  '/foo/:id',
  function(req, res, next) {
    console.log('Authenticate');
    return next();
  },
  function(req, res, next) {
    res.send(200);
    return next();
  }
);

// Most REST APIs tend to need versioning, and restify ships with support for semver versioning in an Accept-Version header, the same way you specify NPM version dependencies
var PATH = '/hello/:name';
server.get({path: PATH, version: '1.1.3'}, sendV1);
server.get({path: PATH, version: '2.0.0'}, sendV2);

// You can default the versions on routes by passing in a version field at server creation time. Lastly, you can support multiple versions in the API by using an array:
server.get({path: PATH, version: ['2.0.0', '2.1.0']}, sendV2);


// 4. Content Negotiation.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Content-Negotiation


// If you're using res.send() restify will automatically select the content-type to respond with, by finding the first registered formatter defined. 
var server = restify.createServer({
  formatters: {
    'application/foo': function formatFoo(req, res, body) {
      if (body instanceof Error)
        return body.stack;

      if (Buffer.isBuffer(body))
        return body.toString('base64');

      return util.inspect(body);
    }
  }
});

// Note that if a content-type can't be negotiated, the default is application/octet-stream. Of course, you can always explicitly set the content-type.
res.setHeader('content-type', 'application/foo');
res.send({hello: 'world'});

// You don't have to use any of this magic, as a restify response object has all the "raw" methods of a node ServerResponse on it as well.
var body = 'hello world';
res.writeHead(200, {
  'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(body),
  'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
});
res.write(body);
res.end();


// 5. Error Handling.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Error-handling


// If you invoke res.send() with an error that has a statusCode attribute, that will be used, otherwise a default of 500 will be used
// You can also shorthand this in a route by doing:

server.get('/hello/:name', function(req, res, next) {
  return database.get(req.params.name, function(err, user) {
    if (err)
      return next(err);

    res.send(user);
    return next();
  });
});

// Alternatively, restify 2.1 supports a next.ifError API

server.get('/hello/:name', function(req, res, next) {
  return database.get(req.params.name, function(err, user) {
    next.ifError(err);
    res.send(user);
    next();
  });
});

// Trigger an HTTP error
// The built-in restify errors are: RestError, BadDigestError, BadMethodError, InternalError, InvalidArgumentError, InvalidContentError, InvalidCredentialsError, InvalidHeaderError, InvalidVersionError, MissingParameterError,
// NotAuthorizedError, RequestExpiredError, RequestThrottledError, ResourceNotFoundError, WrongAcceptError
// The core thing to note about an HttpError is that it has a numeric code (statusCode) and a body. The statusCode will automatically set the HTTP response status code, and the body attribute by default will be the message.

server.get('/hello/:name', function(req, res, next) {
  return next(new restify.ConflictError("I just don't like you"));
});

server.get('/hello/:name', function(req, res, next) {
  return next(new restify.errors.ConflictError("I just don't like you"));
});

server.get('/hello/:name', function(req, res, next) {
  return next(new restify.InvalidArgumentError("I just don't like you"));
});

// You can always add your own by subclassing restify.RestError like:

var restify = require('restify');
var util = require('util');

function MyError(message) {
  restify.RestError.call(this, {
    restCode: 'MyError',
    statusCode: 418,
    message: message,
    constructorOpt: MyError
  });
  this.name = 'MyError';
};

util.inherits(MyError, restify.RestError);


// 6. Socket.io.
// To use socket.io with restify, just treat your restify server as if it were a "raw" node server.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#Socket.IO


var server = restify.createServer();
var io = socketio.listen(server);

server.get('/', function indexHTML(req, res, next) {
  fs.readFile(__dirname + '/index.html', function (err, data) {
    if (err) {
      next(err);
    return;
  }

  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html');
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end(data);
  next();
});


io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
  socket.emit('news', { hello: 'world' });
  socket.on('my other event', function (data) {
    console.log(data);
  });
});

server.listen(8080, function () {
  console.log('socket.io server listening at %s', server.url);
});

2-restify-client-cheatsheet.js

// Restify Client CheatSheet.
// More about the API: http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#client-api
// Install restify with npm install restify


var restify = require('restify');


// 1. JsonClient.
// Sends and expects application/json.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#JsonClient


// options: accept, connectTimeout, requestTimeout, dtrace, gzip, headers, log, retry, signRequest, url, userAgent, version.
var client = restify.createJsonClient(options);

client.get(path, function(err, req, res, obj) {});           // Performs an HTTP get; if no payload was returned, obj defaults to {} for you (so you don't get a bunch of null pointer errors).
client.head(path, function(err, req, res) {});               // Just like get, but without obj.
client.post(path, object, function(err, req, res, obj) {});  // Takes a complete object to serialize and send to the server.
client.put(path, object, function(err, req, res, obj) {});   // Just like post.
client.del(path, function(err, req, res) {});                // del doesn't take content, since you know, it shouldn't.


// 2. StringClient.
// http://mcavage.me/node-restify/#StringClient


// options: accept, connectTimeout, requestTimeout, dtrace, gzip, headers, log, retry, signRequest, url, userAgent, version.
var client = restify.createStringClient(options);

client.get(path, function(err, req, res, data) {});           // Performs an HTTP get; if no payload was returned, data defaults to '' for you (so you don't get a bunch of null pointer errors).
client.head(path, function(err, req, res) {});                // Just like get, but without data.
client.post(path, object, function(err, req, res, data) {});  // Takes a complete object to serialize and send to the server.
client.put(path, object, function(err, req, res, data) {});   // Just like post.
client.del(path, function(err, req, res) {});                 // del doesn't take content, since you know, it shouldn't.