Slope.js Guide

WARNING: This guide is still a work in progress. Please feel free to report errors on the issue tracker.

Introduction

Welcome to slope.js! Slope.js (first letter lowercase unless at the start of a sentence) is an open-source library for Node.js that allows you to easily create web servers.

It requires no advanced functions, no dependencies, and is generally easy-to-use while still maintaining its advanced features.

Installing

There are three ways to install slope.

…with NPM:
```
npm i slope.js
```

…with Git:

git clone "https://github.com/wibbuffey/slope.git"

…with GitHub CLI:
```
gh repo clone wibbuffey/slope
```

The first (installing with NPM) is recommended, as the other two give the most bleeding-edge (and perhaps buggy) version.

Getting Started

In slope, a web server is created using the server class.

const Slope = require("slope.js");
const server = new Slope.Server();

In slope, pages are created using “routes”. A route is a connection between a URL and a function which displays the page. Routes can be specified as strings for direct URLs, with "*" to act as a fallback/wildcard when no page is found, or with a RegEx to have variables in the URL.

Tip: Slope also supports RegExes in the form of strings, such as "/example/test." instead of /\/example\/test./

Routes are specified with Server.Routes. It has two methods: .add() and .remove().

server.routes.add("/test", (Client, Server) => {
  Server.send(`I'm viewing ${Client.url}!`);
});

Note: We’ll explain the callback function later.

Finally, we need to run the web server:

server.run();

And now, if you look at localhost:8080/test, you should see “I’m viewing /test!”

Callback Functions

Let’s explain this callback function a little bit.

server.routes.add("/test", (Client, Server) => {

Already, we see that slope gives the function two parameters: Client and Server.

The Client deals with GETTING values that the user has given, such as the URL or request type.
The Server deals with SETTING values that the user needs to complete the response, such as headers, response code, and content.

Server.send(`I'm viewing ${client.url}!`);

This line sends a message and ends the response.

In order to write text without ending the response or ending the response without writing text, see Server.write() and Server.end().

It formats in Client.url, the URL that the user visits.

Configuration

Suppose that you want to show a different page when your user gets a 404. Or perhaps you want to run the server on port 5000.

Both of these problems have one solution: Config! When creating a Server, there is one optional parameter containing a Config class.

The Config constructor requires an Object with two properties.

Port

This option is a Number that specifies the port at which the server will be ran on.

const Slope = require("slope.js");
const server = new Slope.Server({
  port: 5000,
});

Errors

This option is an Object that specifies functions for slope to call when an error page must be displayed.

const Slope = require("slope.js");
const server = new Slope.Server({
  errors: {
    // It's probably best if you specify both of these,
    // as 404 occurs when no page was found, and 500
    // occurs when slope or a callback function runs into
    // an error.
    404: (Client, Server) => {
      /* ... */
    },
    500: (Client, Server) => {
      /* ... */
    },
  },
});

Going Forward

There are so many topics that weren’t covered here, like functions (such as getMIMEType and raiseErrors), so to continue, consider reading the documentation.