bl-connector-template

A template for creating a Black Lion connector

Setup

npm i

Several npm scripts are provided to build your project in different environments. Each environment changes how the project is built and where it is built to.

npm run-script build-dev builds to ./build/[name].js

npm run-script build-prod minifies your javascript and builds to ./release/[name].js

npm run-script build-test builds a module that can be required in your test suite and builds to ./test/build/[name].js

npm run build reads the default environment from env in the ./config.js file and runs the corresponding build configuration. The intial default environment is "development"

In order to build you need in a specific environment you need its corresponding .json file: development.json, production.json, and test.json. These files are parsed and used to create the environment variables used in the REST calls so as to not expose your credentials or endpoints in the source code. An example of one of these files might look like this:

{
  "username": "someUsername",
  "password": "somePassword",
  "endpoint": "http://foobar.com/path/to/endpoint"
}

npm start runs webpack-dev-server on localhost

Usage

Each REST call you need to make should be defined in the RESTCalls object in index.js as a function where you set up the unique aspects of each call and Serialize the result.

Each type of object you expect to receive from your REST calls should have their own corresponding Model class and method in the Serializer class in order to map them in a consistent manner.

Creating a Model

Models are used to define the fields that should be present in the objects you return from your http requests.

Models are ES6 classes with a constructor that takes an Object containing all the fields that should be mapped to that Model.

class Person {
  constructor(params) {
    let fields = {
      params.firstname: this.firstname,
      params.lastname: this.lastname
    } = params;
  }
}

The constructor uses an ES6 destructuring assignment to set the public fields. For info on how to use destructuring assignments read this blog post: Destructuring Assignment in ECMAScript 6.