v4.4.0

LiteNode 4.4.0 Release

I'm excited to announce the release of LiteNode 4.4.0, which introduces several powerful new features and enhancements to make your development experience even smoother.

New Features

🍪 Comprehensive Cookie Management

A complete cookie management system is now available:

• setCookie(), getCookie(), and clearCookie() methods on the response object
• New enableCookieParser() middleware to parse incoming cookies into req.cookies
• Signed cookies for security with HMAC-SHA256 via createSignedCookies()
• Full support for cookie options (httpOnly, secure, sameSite, etc.)

// Enable cookie parsing
app.enableCookieParser();

// Set a cookie
app.get('/login', (req, res) => {
  res.setCookie('session', 'abc123', { 
    maxAge: 3600,
    httpOnly: true,
    secure: true
  });
  res.redirect('/dashboard');
});

// Use signed cookies for added security
const signedCookies = app.createSignedCookies('strong-secret-key');

app.get('/secure', async (req, res) => {
  const userId = await signedCookies.getCookie(req, 'userId');
  if (!userId) return res.redirect('/login');
  res.json({ message: 'Secure content' });
});

🚀 Flexible Routing Enhancements

The router now supports:

• Optional route parameters with /:param? syntax
• Wildcard routes with /* (single segment) and /** (catch-all) patterns
• New helper methods for common routing patterns:
  • app.any() - register a route for all HTTP methods
  • app.wildcard() - match a single path segment
  • app.catchAll() - match multiple path segments

// Optional parameters
app.get('/users/:id?', (req, res) => {
  // Matches both /users and /users/123
  const id = req.params.id || 'all';
  res.json({ id });
});

// Wildcard routes (matches a single path segment)
app.wildcard('/files', (req, res) => {
  const filename = req.params['*'];
  res.json({ file: filename });
});

// Catch-all routes (matches multiple path segments)
app.catchAll('/api', (req, res) => {
  const path = req.params['**'];
  res.json({ path });
});

// Handle any HTTP method
app.any('/health', (req, res) => {
  res.json({ status: 'ok', method: req.method });
});

🛠️ Enhanced HTTP Methods

Added body parsing to all HTTP methods that commonly use request bodies:

• PUT, PATCH, and DELETE methods now automatically parse request bodies, just like POST
• Access request data directly via req.body in all methods
• Optional customMaxRequestSize parameter for all body-parsing methods

app.put('/users/:id', async (req, res) => {
  const userData = req.body;  // Body automatically parsed
  // Update user...
  res.json({ updated: true });
});

app.delete('/items', async (req, res) => {
  const itemIds = req.body.ids;  // Access parsed JSON data
  // Delete items...
  res.status(200).end();
}, 5); // 5MB max request size

📝 Template Engine Improvements

• Support for backtick string literals (``) in templates, aligning with modern JavaScript
• Enhanced dateFormat filter with improved robustness and formatting options
• Better handling of template literals in HTML attributes with ternary operators

<!-- Now you can use backticks in templates -->
<option value="draft" {{ item.status="draft" ? `selected` : `` }}>Draft</option>

<!-- Enhanced date formatting -->
<span>{{ date | dateFormat('YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm') }}</span>

Installation & Upgrade

npm install litenode@latest

As always, this release maintains full backward compatibility, so upgrading should be seamless. Check out the documentation for detailed usage instructions.

I appreciate your feedback and contributions - enjoy the new features!