Express extension

Express Extension

UQL provides a built-in Express middleware to automatically generate RESTful APIs for your entities with zero boilerplate. It handles the entire request lifecycle, including query parsing, transaction management, and automatic querier release.

Quick Start

Initialize the querierMiddleware in your Express app:

import express from 'express';
import { querierMiddleware } from '@uql/core/express';
import { pool } from './uql.config.js';
import { User, Post } from './shared/models/index.js';

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

// This will automatically generate routes like /api/user and /api/post
app.use('/api', querierMiddleware({
  include: [User, Post]
}));

app.listen(3000);

Advanced Configuration

The middleware is highly customizable, allowing you to intercept requests, filter data based on the authenticated user, and more.

app.use('/api', querierMiddleware({
  // Intercept every request
  pre(req, meta) {
    console.log(`Processing ${req.method} on ${meta.name}`);
  },

  // Intercept save operations (POST, PATCH, PUT)
  preSave(req, meta) {
    // Automatically set the creatorId from the session
    req.body.creatorId = req.user.id;
  },

  // Intercept filter operations (GET, DELETE)
  preFilter(req, meta) {
    // Enforce Row-Level Security: users only see their own data
    req.query.$where = {
      ...req.query.$where,
      creatorId: req.user.id
    };
  }
}));

Hook Reference

Hook	Lifecycle	Use Case
`pre`	Before every operation.	Logging, auditing, global validation.
`preSave`	Before `POST`, `PATCH`, `PUT`.	Injecting `creatorId`, `updatedAt`, or data sanitization.
`preFilter`	Before `GET`, `DELETE`.	Row-level security, tenant isolation, enforcing `softDelete`.

Generated Endpoints

For an entity named User, the following endpoints are automatically generated:

Method	Endpoint	Description
`GET`	`/user`	List users (supports pagination, filtering, and sorting).
`GET`	`/user/:id`	Get a single user by ID.
`POST`	`/user`	Create a new user.
`PATCH`	`/user/:id`	Update a user partially.
`DELETE`	`/user/:id`	Delete a user (supports soft-delete if configured).