NationScript

NationScript is a Node.js library that is meant to make interactions with the NationStates API beginner-friendly ‒ taking care of rate-limiting, adding full types to API responses, and providing various enums for easier request-building and understanding of responses ‒ while also offering additional methods and customisation options for API interactions to support more advanced and/or niche use cases.

NationScript is tailored to version 12 of the NS API and supports all endpoints it offers.

Installation

NationScript is available via npm:

npm install nationscript

Usage

Before making any requests to the API, be sure to set a custom user agent that allows NationStates staff to contact you in case anything goes wrong with your script:

const { NS } = require('nationscript');
NS.setAgent('Tepertopia Example Script');

Doing so is mandatory and NationScript will not execute any (although allow preparation of) requests before a user agent has been set.

Request Initialisation

To begin building a request, use one of the functions on the NS object ‒ each of them returns a request subclass instance specifically adjusted to the API endpoint it is expected to address:

Sharding & Setting Other Parameters

After instantiating it, you can chain additional function calls on the request instance in order to add shards or other special parameters to the request:

const { NS, NationShard, CensusScale } = require('nationscript');
let n = NS.nation('Tepertopia')
    // Add shards to the request...
    .shard(NationShard.REGION, NationShard.CENSUS)
	// ...and configure additional options for those shards
    .setCensusScales(CensusScale.RELIGIOUSNESS);

Here, the NationShard and CensusScale enums are used to quickly reference the values expected by the API for these cases. NationScript offers shard enums for all shardable request types (nation, region, world, wa, cardDetails, and cards), plus a variety of other enums for cases where the API expects or itself returns values from a defined set of legal options.

Authentication

If you're requesting a nation private shard or want to execute a nation private command, you need to authenticate the request before executing it. The NSCredential class offers an organised way of storing login and session PIN information for a nation, and is used whenever authentication is required:

let login = new NSCredential('Example Nation', 'password', 'autologin');

let n = NS.nation('Example Nation')
    .shard(NationPrivateShard.PING)
    .authenticate(login);

// Commands may also be authenticated at instantiation already!
let c = NS.issue(login);

The NSCredential instance that is used for authentication automatically gets its pin property updated whenever the API returns a new X-Pin header.

Execution & Response

Once you've fully built your desired request, send it to the API:

let nationData = await n.send();

Responses from the API are converted to custom object types according to what you requested ‒ all of them fully defined using JSDoc, so you should be able to simply use your editor's intelligent code completion to see which exact property corresponds to your requested data, without having to memorise the (sometimes complicated) makeup of API responses.

Alternative Methods

NationScript also offers alternative ways of getting the data you want!

Custom Request Building

If you'd like to build a requests in a more low-level way, the .custom() function of the NS object got your back! It instantiates a very basic ParameterRequest, on which you're able to use the .setArgument(key, val) and .setHeader(key, val) functions to define queries and authenticate:

let custom = await NS.custom()
    .setArgument('region', 'the_south_pacific')
    .setArgument('q', 'flag+messages')
    .setArgument('offset', '5')
    .send();

These functions are also available on all of the specialised request classes, so it's possible to mix and match in any way you want!

Raw Responses

Using the .raw() function instead of .send() on any request instance enables you to receive the raw response from the API in place of the automatic conversion to NationScript objects:

let response = await NS.nation('Tepertopia').raw();

This will return an IncomingMessage instance (from the native node:http module). If enabled, the request is also still rate-limited.

Settings Configuration

In addition to the different ways of usage, you can also change a number of settings to adapt NationScript to your use case:

Disabling The Built-In Rate-Limiter

If you would like to rate-limit your requests to the NS API externally, you can disable the built-in rate-limiter of NationScript:

NS.setUseRateLimit(false);

Using A Specific API Version

You can configure NationScript to use a specific or the most recent version of the NS API for all requests, like so:

NS.setUseVersion(11);   // Use named version
NS.setUseVersion(null); // Use the latest version

By default, all requests are made in API version 12 (as of coding, the latest version) in order to ensure a safe conversion of API response XML to the NationScript custom object types.

Output Directory and File Names of Dump Copies

When querying Daily Data Dumps in a DumpMode that may interact with local copies of Data Dumps, NationScript will save and look for local copies of the queried Data Dump at the path ./nsdumps. You can set an alternative folder to contain local Dump copies instead:

NS.setDumpDirectory('path/to/directory/');

By default, NationScript saves and looks for Dump files according to the naming pattern nations_YYYY-MM-DD.xml.gz, regions_YYYY-MM-DD.xml.gz, or cards_sX.xml.gz, respectively. Naturally, your naming pattern may differ, so you can define alternative patterns:

NS.setDumpNameNation((date) => date.toDateString() + '-nations.xml.gz');
NS.setDumpNameRegion((date) => `r${date.toLocaleDateString()}.xml.gz`);

// The final path to the file is determined by resolving the defined directory
// with the result of the file naming function appended, so you can also save
// specific dumps in another folder
NS.setDumpNameCard((season) => `cards/season-${season}.xml.gz`);

Name Conversion and Timestamps

The NationRequest and RegionRequest constructors automatically convert the nation/region name provided to them to lowercase and replace spaces with underscores (internally called the id_form of names). For data returned by the API, the respective properties all explicitly state whether the data is in id_form or Proper Form (properly capitalised, with normal spaces).

All timestamps returned by the API are in Unix Epoch format. Likewise, where a timestamp may be provided to the API with a request, this is also expected to be a Unix Epoch timestamp.

Documentation

The full documentation (both for internal stuff and the actual user interface) is available here on GitHub Pages.

Licence

Mozilla Public License 2.0.