Controllers and actions

Controllers are classes of which (most) methods are actions. Actions are what handles an HTTP request. A controller is also a service, providing you with all the benefits that come with it.

Let's take control and jump into action.

Hehe.

Services?

Yep. Controllers are services. Services are loaded through a service manager (yes, there are multiple, don't worry about it). This means you can register them as such and have factories, invokables, aliases... All of that good stuff.

I won't go into detail here as this is covered in the Services topic but I will give you an example to inspire you, like your very own little muse.

import { AbstractActionController, Config, inject } from 'stix';
import { WetlandService } from 'stix-wetland';

class SomeController extends AbstractActionController {
  @inject(WetlandService)
  private wetlandService: WetlandService;

  @inject(Config)
  private config: Config;
  
  public async findBooks() {
    // You now have access to the wetlandService and config.
  }
}

Cool huh?

Actions

Actions can be async methods and are required to return a response. The former speaks for itself, the latter might be confusing but is explained in the Response chapter.

Actions get one argument being the context, which is the koa context.

AbstractActionController

Let me start of by saying that extending this class is optional for controllers, but recommended.

It does 2 things:

1. Inject the response service
2. Expose a couple of convenience methods for easy responses

The methods exposed are:

• okResponse
• createdResponse
• notFoundResponse
• requestTimeoutResponse
• forbiddenResponse
• badRequestResponse
• unauthorizedResponse
• internalServerErrorResponse
• permanentRedirectResponse

You can find the methods and their arguments in the api docs.

These methods simply make it easier to return a response.