Handler Lifecycle

Prerequisites: npm install jaypie

Overview

Jaypie handlers follow a consistent lifecycle: validate, setup, execute, teardown. This pattern applies to both expressHandler and lambdaHandler, ensuring consistent behavior across execution environments.

Quick Reference

Phase	Purpose	On Failure
Validate	Check preconditions (auth, input)	Returns error response, skips remaining phases
Setup	Initialize resources (DB connections)	Returns error response, runs teardown
Execute	Main handler logic	Returns error response, runs teardown
Teardown	Cleanup (close connections)	Always runs, even on error

Lifecycle Phases

1. Logger Initialization

Before any lifecycle phase, the handler:

• Reinitializes the logger
• Tags logs with invoke ID (unique per invocation)
• Tags logs with handler name (if provided)

2. Secrets Loading

If secrets option is provided, loads secrets from AWS Secrets Manager into process.env before validation.

expressHandler(handler, {
  secrets: ["MONGODB_URI", "API_KEY"],
});
// process.env.MONGODB_URI and process.env.API_KEY available in handler

3. Validate Phase

Validation functions run in order. Any function can reject the request by:

• Throwing an error (returns error response)
• Returning false (returns 400 Bad Request)

expressHandler(handler, {
  validate: [
    (req) => req.headers.authorization, // falsy = 400
    (req) => {
      if (!req.body.id) throw BadRequestError("Missing id");
    },
  ],
});

4. Setup Phase

Setup functions run after validation passes. Use for resource initialization.

expressHandler(handler, {
  setup: [
    async () => await connectDatabase(),
    async (req) => {
      req.locals.user = await loadUser(req.headers.authorization);
    },
  ],
});

5. Execute Phase

The main handler function runs after setup completes.

expressHandler(async (req, res) => {
  // Main logic here
  return { data: result };
});

6. Teardown Phase

Teardown functions always run, even if earlier phases fail.

expressHandler(handler, {
  teardown: [
    async () => await closeDatabase(),
  ],
});

Handler Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
name	string	-	Handler name for logging
secrets	string[]	-	Secrets to load from AWS Secrets Manager
setup	Function[]	-	Functions to run before handler
teardown	Function[]	-	Functions to run after handler (always)
unavailable	boolean	false	Return 503 immediately
validate	Function[]	-	Validation functions

Response Handling

Handler return values are automatically converted to HTTP responses:

Return Value	HTTP Status	Response Body
object	200	JSON object
null / undefined	204	No content
true	201	No content
false	204	No content
Thrown error	Error status	JSON:API error

Usage Examples

Express Handler

import { expressHandler, log, NotFoundError } from "jaypie";

export default expressHandler(
  async (req, res) => {
    log.trace("[getUser] fetching user");
    const user = await db.users.findById(req.params.id);
    if (!user) throw NotFoundError();
    return { data: user };
  },
  {
    name: "getUser",
    secrets: ["MONGODB_URI"],
    validate: [(req) => req.params.id],
    setup: [async () => await connectMongo()],
    teardown: [async () => await disconnectMongo()],
  }
);

Lambda Handler

import { lambdaHandler, log } from "jaypie";

export const handler = lambdaHandler(
  async (event, context) => {
    log.trace("[processEvent] processing");
    return { processed: true };
  },
  {
    name: "processEvent",
    secrets: ["API_KEY"],
  }
);

Related

• Error Handling - Jaypie error types and JSON:API format
• Logging - Structured logging with trace IDs
• @jaypie/express - Express handler reference
• @jaypie/lambda - Lambda handler reference