Cannot POST /api/users using loopback-connector-rest

[Julian Mayorga]

Hello kind folks from the lovely loopback community,

Here's my situation, I setup a small repository to test connection between two loopback apps using loopback-connector-rest. I created both apps with slc lb project, so I am sure you are familiar with their structure.

I have two apps, a master app with a User model using a memory datasource, and a slave app with a User model with a loopback-connector-rest datasource and a baseUrl that points towards master app's url. You can check out the repository on github: https://github.com/JulianMayorga/rest-connector-example

The problem is that with this setup I cannot do a POST to [slave_url]/api/users, even though I can do that with the master's url. I defined a test that proves I cannot do this:

'use strict';

var request = require('supertest');
var should = require('should');

var master = require('../master/app.js');
var slave = require('../slave/app.js');

describe('Master server', function () {
  var email = 'em...@example.com';
  var password = '123456';

  it('should return new user email and id', function (done) {
    request(master)
    .post('/api/users')
    .send({
      email: email,
      password: password
    })
    .expect(200)
    .end(function (err, res) {
      res.body.email.should.equal(email);
      res.body.id.should.be.an.instanceOf(Number);
      done();
    });
  });
});

describe('Slave server', function () {
  var email = 'anothe...@example.com';
  var password = '123456';

  it('should return new user email and id', function (done) {
    request(slave)
    .post('/api/users')
    .send({
      email: email,
      password: password
    })
    .expect(200)
    .end(function (err, res) {
      res.body.email.should.equal(email);
      res.body.id.should.be.an.instanceOf(Number);
      done();
    });
  });

}); 

And this is the output I get when running mocha:

POST /api/users 200 703ms - 45b

․․

  1 passing (3s)

  1 failing

  1) Slave server should return new user email and id:

     Error: timeout of 2000ms exceeded

In order to figure out what's happening here I tried to debug the app by running DEBUG=loopback:connector:rest node app.js in slave app, which outputs the following debug message:

POST /api/users 200 2015ms

  loopback:connector:rest Request: {"method":"GET","uri":"http://localhost:3000/api/users","json":true,"qs":{"where":{"email":"anothe...@example.com"}}} +25s

So then I checked out the logs in master server, and it is effectively receiving a GET request:

GET /api/users?where[email]=anotheremail%40example.com 401 6ms - 1.06kb

I don't know why, but rest connector fires a GET request instead of a POST when I try to create a user. Does anyone know why this might happen?

I just want to have a central app that stores users and accessTokens, and secondary apps that have their own models but use the central app for users and tokens.

Thanks so much in advance,

Julián.

[Raymond Feng]

For REST connector, you will have to configure operations with HTTP methods. See http://docs.strongloop.com/display/LB/REST+connector.

In your case, if you just want to proxy LoopBack models running on a different server, ‘remote’ connector is a better choice.

https://github.com/strongloop/loopback/blob/master/lib/connectors/remote.js

https://github.com/strongloop/loopback/blob/master/test/remote-connector.test.js

It allows you to transparently interact with a remote LoopBack model.

 

Thanks,

---

Raymond Feng

Co-Founder and Architect @ StrongLoop, Inc.

StrongLoop makes it easy to develop APIs in Node, plus get DevOps capabilities like monitoring, debugging and clustering.

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[Julian Mayorga]

Thanks Raymond! I got it working with remote connector.

I have a doubt related to remote connector. I had to set it restApiRoot in my app to '/' instead of '/api' so that it works.

{
  "port": 3000,
  "host": "0.0.0.0",
  "cookieSecret": "710dacf8-b1af-4baf-91e8-dc7bbcd0c956",
  "restApiRoot": "/"
}

How do you configure the remote connector so that it recognizes loopback's default restApiRoute? 

  "remote": {
    "defaultForType": "remote",
    "connector": "remote",
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 3000
  }

[Raymond Feng]

You can configure the remote connector as follows:

{

"remote”: { 

  "defaultForType": “remote”,

  "connector": "remote”,

  "host": "localhost”,

  "port": 3000,

  “root”: “/api"

  }

}

or 

{

"remote”: { 

  "defaultForType": “remote”,

  "connector": "remote”,

  “url": “http://localhost:3000/api”

  }

}

Thanks,

---

Raymond Feng

Co-Founder and Architect @ StrongLoop, Inc.

StrongLoop makes it easy to develop APIs in Node, plus get DevOps capabilities like monitoring, debugging and clustering.

[Julian Mayorga]

Cool, that'll do it! I'm sorry for troubling you, I guess I have to level up my code-reading skills.

Thanks,