koa-lite/docs/api/index.md
2013-11-15 10:04:07 -08:00

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## Application
A Koa application is not a 1-to-1 representation of an HTTP server,
as one or more Koa applications may be mounted together to form larger
applications, with a single HTTP server.
The following is a useless Koa application bound to port `3000`:
```js
var koa = require('koa');
var app = koa();
app.listen(3000);
```
The `app.listen(...)` method is simply sugar for the following:
```js
var http = require('http');
var koa = require('koa');
var app = koa();
http.createServer(app.callback()).listen(3000);
```
This means you can spin up the same application as both HTTP and HTTPS,
or on multiple addresses:
```js
var http = require('http');
var koa = require('koa');
var app = koa();
http.createServer(app.callback()).listen(3000);
http.createServer(app.callback()).listen(3001);
```
### Settings
Application settings are properties on the `app` instance, currently
the following are supported:
- `app.name` optionally give your application a name
- `app.env` defaulting to the __NODE_ENV__ or "development"
- `app.proxy` when true proxy header fields will be trusted
- `app.subdomainOffset` offset of `.subdomains` to ignore [2]
- `app.jsonSpaces` default JSON response spaces [2]
- `app.outputErrors` output err.stack to stderr [false in "test" environment]
### app.listen(...)
Create and return an HTTP server, passing the given arguments to
`Server#listen()`. These arguments are documented on [nodejs.org](http://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_server_listen_port_hostname_backlog_callback).
### app.callback()
Return a callback function suitable for the `http.createServer()`
method to handle a request.
### app.use(function)
Add the given middleware function to this application. See [Middleware](#middleware) for
more information.
### app.keys=
Set signed cookie keys.
These are passed to [KeyGrip](https://github.com/jed/keygrip),
however you may also pass your own `KeyGrip` instance. For
example the following are acceptable:
```js
app.keys = ['im a newer secret', 'i like turtle'];
app.keys = new KeyGrip(['im a newer secret', 'i like turtle'], 'sha256');
```
These keys may be rotated and are used when signing cookies
with the `{ signed: true }` option:
```js
this.cookies.set('name', 'tobi', { signed: true });
```
## Handling Requests
Koa requests are manipulated using a `Context` object containing both a Koa `Request` and `Response` object. For more information on these view:
- [Context](context.md)
- [Request](request.md)
- [Response](response.md)
## Error Handling
By default outputs all errors to stderr unless __NODE_ENV__ is "test". To perform custom error-handling logic such as centralized logging you
can add an "error" event listener:
```js
app.on('error', function(err){
log.error('server error', err);
});
```
If an error in the req/res cycle and it is _not_ possible to respond to the client, the `Context` instance is also passed:
```js
app.on('error', function(err){
log.error('server error', err);
});
```
When an error occurs _and_ it is still possible to respond to the client, aka no data has been written to the socket, Koa will respond
appropriately with a 500 "Internal Server Error". In either case
an app-level "error" is emitted for logging purposes.
## Notes
### HEAD Support
Koa's upstream response middleware supports __HEAD__ for you,
however expensive requests would benefit from custom handling. For
example instead of reading a file into memory and piping it to the
client, you may wish to `stat()` and set the `Content-*` header fields
appropriately to bypass the read.
### Socket Errors
Node http servers emit a "clientError" event when a socket error occurs. You'll probably want to delegate this to your
Koa handler by doing the following, in order to centralize
logging:
```js
var app = koa();
var srv = app.listen(3000);
srv.on('clientError', function(err){
app.emit('error', err);
});
```
# License
MIT