Apologies if this question is too general. This is not an invitation for "opinion-based" answers. Unfortunately, at this stage of the project and with my limited knowledge in this space, I just need some guidance from more experienced people.
In a large company project, I have a web service that is based on NOSQL data models. I have little influence over the design of this service. Due to the data structure, when overseeing the development of a large and complex mobile app (for multiple platforms), I noticed that sometimes it was necessary to make calls to multiple endpoints in sequence to get the required information.
For example: there is the need to first call an endpoint sending certain parameters to get a user ID, then use that user ID to get details about the user. The system cannot deliver the user details on the first call. This leads to complex data parsing and background processes on the clients.
To simplify mobile development, we now want to build a "middleware" layer that simplifies the API for the mobile clients. The app would call the middleware as the single point of entry, the middleware would call the existing endpoints to gather the necessary data and deliver the result back to the client.
For example, the client would ask for finding a certain user and delivering certain attributes of this user (e.g. the first names of all friends of the user) with one API endpoint. The middleware would need to make many calls to the backend: search for the user, use the result (user ID) to get details and friends of the user, use the delivered friends' userIDs to gather data about the friends. Then the middleware would package the information and deliver it back to the client.
Initial recommendations from colleagues indicate that Node.JS would be a good framework for developing this type of functionality in a maintainable, scalable way.
OK, I know how to run a simple server and manage routes on a node system, but how would you organize this project, e.g. the file structure? Which components would you encapsulate. Are there any frameworks on top of Node that would help with a task like that?
I am not looking for "opinions", just for some insightful recommendations based on experience or knowledge. Feel free to down-vote this question after you have stated what you do not like about it and have asked specific questions to clarify (I will comply as soon as possible). Thanks.
