res.send and res.json not available when using router without express?

[sjanuary]

I've been working on an example for the docs for #36 but the following didn't work for me:

var finalhandler = require('finalhandler')
var http         = require('http')
var Router       = require('router')

var router = Router()
router.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain; charset=utf-8')
  res.json({link: '/abc'})
  res.end()
})

var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
  router(req, res, finalhandler(req, res))
})

server.listen(3000)

Instead I got TypeError: undefined is not a function

It seems like res.json and res.send aren't available if a Router is used standalone without Express. Is this by design? I couldn't find anything about it in the docs or in past issues.

[dougwilson]

This is by design, as those are not part of routing a request. The router just routes requests to handles. Anything the router provides should be in the README in the repository (and it doesn't call out to everything not included, as that would be a pretty much endless list--if it's not in the docs, it can be assumed to not exist).

With the router, your req and res will simply look like however they looked when you passed them into the main router function. In your example, you are passing what comes from http.createServer, so the methods on those objects are documented in node.js:

https://nodejs.org/api/http.html

[sjanuary]

Thanks @dougwilson, that makes sense.