Restlet Framework

RESTful web API framework for JavaScript

Version	Linux	OS X	Windows	Coverage	Dependencies

Do you want to blend your web services, web sites and web clients into unified web applications exposing and consuming RESTful web APIs? Leverage the open source Restlet Framework and its unique JavaScript API available in two consistent editions: Node.js and Browser/AJAX!

NOTE: this is a port in progress of the Restlet Framework for Java.

http://restlet.org

Installing

For Node, use NPM with the following command:

npm install restlet

For browsers, use Bower with the following command:

bower install restlet

or get the JavaScript files from folder browser/dist from Github.

Getting started

Within Node applications

Restlet JS follows the same concepts than the Java version. It leverages the following elements:

Component that integrates the whole engine (server and application)
Server that makes available the Restlet applications for a specific protocol
Application that corresponds to the Restlet application itself and allows to define processing elements for requests
Router that defines how can server resources will be accessed
Server resource corresponds to the element to process request

Following code describes how to implement a simple Restlet application using JavaScript and Node:

var restlet = require('restlet');

var component = restlet.createComponent();

// Add a new HTTP server listening on port 3000.
component.addServer('http', 3000);

// Create the sample application.
var application = restlet.createApplication(function() {
  // Create the application router
  var router = restlet.createRouter();

  // Attach a list element server resource
  router.attach('/contacts/',
    restlet.createServerResource().get(function(request, response) {
      var contacts = [        {            id: '1',            lastName: 'Fielding',            firstName: 'Roy'        }      ];
      response.writeObject(contacts);
      response.end();
    })
    .post({ convertInputEntity: true,
        parameters: [ 'entity', 'response'] }, function(contact, response) {
      // add contact
      (...)

      response.status('201');
      response.end();
    });
  );

  return router;
});

// Attach the sample application.
component.getDefaultHost().attachDefault(application);

// Start the component.
component.start();

Restlet JS also provides a client support to call REST resources:

var restlet = require('restlet');

restlet.createClientResource('http://myurl')
  .get({
    accept: 'application/json'
    parameters: [ 'entity' ],
    convertOutputEntity: true },
  function(entity) {
    (...)
  });

Within browsers

Restlet JS also provides a client support to call REST resources with browsers:

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-2.1.4.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="lodash.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="moment-2.10.3.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="restlet.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      $(document).ready(function() {
        $('#test').click(function() {
          restlet.createClientResource('http://localhost:8080/data.json').get({
            accept: 'application/json',
            parameters: [ 'entity' ],
            convertInputEntity: true
          }, function(entity) {
            console.log('>> entity = ' + JSON.stringify(entity));
          });
        });
      });
    </script>
  </head>

  <body>
    <span id="test">Run Restlet client</span>
  </body>
</html>

Documentation

Version	Status	Documentation
0.4.1	In progress	Server API Reference
0.4.1	In progress	Client API Reference

Support

If you have questions about the framework and the way to use it, you can ask a question on the StackOverflow website using tags restlet and javascript or restlet.js.

Contribute

If you want to contribute to the framework, please have a look at this page: Contributing Restlet JS

restlet