Problems adding routes for plugins

[Mike Kelly]

I have an app with a plugin structure.

I don't know the filepaths of the plugins when starting the app - I look for all valid plugins in the 'plugins' folder. I would like to do the equivalent of this for each plugin:

 app.use('/'+ plugin.getPluginName(), plugin.getRoutes());

If I do this in a loop in app.js, the route seems to be added to Express but calls to it result in a 404 error.

I have tried changing the order in which my plugin routes are added to Express, but that didn't work. I have an alternative routing approach working which uses a catch-all routing clause, but I would like to get this working or at least work out what's wrong with this approach.

Here's what I'm doing currently - why doesn't it work?

app.js

var routes = require('./routes/index');
var cards = require('./routes/cards');
var projects = require('./routes/projects');

var app = express();

// Use `.hbs` for extensions
app.engine('hbs', hbs.express3({}));
app.set('view engine', 'hbs');
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');

//app.use(favicon(__dirname + '/public/favicon.ico'));
app.use(logger('dev'));
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(cookieParser());
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'client')));

// Make our db functionality accessible to our router
app.use(function(req,res,next) {
    req.bookshelf = bookshelf;
    next();
});

var getPlugins = function(dir, pluginFiles) {
    .
    .
    .
    return pluginFiles;
};

var registerPlugins = function() {
    var plugins = getPlugins('plugins');

    // register plugins and setup databases if required
    // set up routing for each plugin
    _.each(plugins, function(plugin) {
        var p = require('./' + plugin);
        p.Plugin.register();
        p.Plugin.initRouting(app);
    });
};

// set up dbs and register plugins
dbinit.dbInit()
    .then(function() {
        registerPlugins();
    });

app.use('/', routes);
app.use('/cards', cards);
app.use('/projects', projects);

plugin.js

var pluginModels    = require('../../../models/plugin'),
    _               = require('underscore'),
    db              = require('./dbinit'),
    bookshelf       = require('../../../orm');

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

var Pinboard;

Pinboard = pluginModels.Plugin.extend({},{

    // register function is in base class

    initialize: function () {
    },

    initDb: function() {
        db.dbinit();
    },

    initRouting: function(app) {
        routes  = require('./routes');
        app.use('/pinboards', routes);
    }
});

module.exports = {
    Plugin: Pinboard
};

routes.js, in same folder as plugin.js

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
    res.send('Get Some Pinboards');
});

module.exports = router;

[Mike Kelly]

Should anyone else have a similar issue, I solved it this way in app.js:

// set up dbs and register plugins

var pluginsToRegister   = getPlugins('plugins', 'plugin.js'),
    pluginRoutes        = getPlugins('plugins', 'routes.js');

dbinit.dbInit()
    .then(function() {
        registerPlugins(pluginsToRegister);

    });

app.use('/', routes);

app.use('/users', users);
app.use('/cards', cards);
app.use('/tags', tags);
app.use('/boards', plugins);
app.use('/pages', plugins);
app.use('/plugins', plugins);
app.use('/plugintypes', plugintypes);
app.use('/projects', projects);
_.each(pluginRoutes, function (routeSettings) {
    app.use('/' + routeSettings.path, require('./' + routeSettings.routesModule));
});