Full HTTPS REST server in Node.js

Posted by Bogomil Shopov, on July 20, 2011

How to write a simple HTTPS JSON REST server using node.js components. 

0. Create certificates.

If you don’t have valid https certificates, you can generate one for testing purposes. If you need one cool certificate, you can join cacert community. Anyway, let’s openssl for a while:

openssl genrsa -out privatekey.pem 1024 
openssl req -new -key privatekey.pem -out certrequest.csr 
openssl x509 -req -in certrequest.csr -signkey privatekey.pem -out certificate.pem

1. Install additional modules.

We will need just one aditional module, called journey.

It’s working only in JSON mode, but anyway I don’t like XML REST at all. JSON is the future, baby.

npm install journey

2. Writing the router.js file.

- Define the modules required:

var journey = require('journey');
var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');

- Define the certificates part:

var privateKey = fs.readFileSync('../certs/privatekey.pem');
var certificate = fs.readFileSync('../certs/certificate.pem');
 
var options = {
  key: privateKey,
  cert: certificate
};

- Define the router that will handle all REST requests (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE):

var mrouter = new (journey.Router)();

- Define the map of all requests. In other words what to do when the router receive a request:

mrouter.map(function () {
// Default URL
this.root.bind(function (req, res) { res.send("Welcome to my application") });
 
//GET request on /databases
this.get('/databases').bind(function (req, res) {
do something
});
 
//GET request on a specific database - /database/users21
this.get(/^databases\/([A-Za-z0-9_]+)$/).bind(function (req, res, id) {
  //id contains 'users21' part       
 });
 
/**PUT request example. 
* You can deal with as many parameters as you need, just write the regexp for it and assign a parameter. 
* Here is an example to update a document on a collection on MongoDB database. 
* We have 3 user parameters - 6 parameters in URL:
**/
this.put(/^databases\/([A-Za-z0-9_]+)\/collections+\/([A-Za-z0-9_]+)\/documents+\/([A-Za-z0-9_]+)$/).bind(function (req, res, dbid, collid, docid, data) {
         res.send('update '+docid+ 'in '+collid + 'on: '+ dbid);
 });
}); //end mapping

3. And the last thing we should do is to turn on the HTTPS server and the router

https.createServer(options,function (request, response) {
    var body = "";
 
    request.addListener('data', function (chunk) { body += chunk });
    request.addListener('end', function () {
 
        mrouter.handle(request, body, function (result) {
 
            response.writeHead(result.status, result.headers);
            response.end(result.body);
        });
    });
}).listen(8081);

4. Run and connect your JSON client on httpS://127.0.0.1:8081 to test it.

node router.js