Routing Basics

Responses - itty-router

To create Responses easily, itty-router includes several response helpers, as well as exposing the utility function createResponse to make your own custom types:

Included Response Helpers

The following basic response helpers have been included in the core library to handle the most common API delivery types:

json text html jpeg png webp

Each of these creates a new Response, with the appropriate content-type header included for the corresponding MIME-type.

Response helpers have the following signature (replace json with any other helper name):

json(data: any, options?: ResponseInit): Response

For example:

import { json } from 'itty-router'

json({ foo: 'bar' }, { status: 418 })

Creates the following Response:

new Response({
  status: 418,
  headers: {
    'content-type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: '{"foo":"bar"}'
})

Creating Your Own Response Helpers

createResponse(mimeType: string, formatter?: Function)

In order to streamline making your own custom response types, we're sharing the createResponse helper we use to make all the response helpers in itty. To use it, simply pass in the content-type header for the MIME-type, and optionally, a body formatter (second argument).

For example, here's how we use it to create the json helper.

import { createResponse } from 'itty-router'

const json = createResponse('application/json', JSON.stringify)

json({ foo: 'bar' }) // creates JSON-formatted Response

Downstream Response Formatters

Because each response helper transforms raw data into a valid Response, they can also be used downstream, rather than at the route level. This allows route code to remain simpler, removing the boilerplate of always transforming data into JSON within each route handler. Additionally, as all route handlers are awaited, async functions (that eventually return data) are a perfectly valid response if caught and transformed downstream.

Example

import { json, IttyRouter } from 'itty-router'

const router = IttyRouter()
  .get('/json', (request) => ['bar', 'baz'])

// later when fetching
router
  .fetch(request)
  .then(json) // <-- add the JSON transform downstream