bredele / wall

Express inspired web framework for your browser -- insanely flexible, and simple

Wall

Your web application foundation.

Minimalist and composable web framework for your browser.

var wall = require('wall');
var app = wall();

app.use(auth());
app.use(localstore());
app.use('settings', settings);

You probably noticed wall is deeply inspired by express. As express, its clean and nice API provides a robust set of features to build scalable and maintainable application in a flash.

Installation

Install with npm:

$ npm install wall

Install with component:

$ component install bredele/wall

See Getting started. and API.

Philosophy

The Wall philosophy is to reduce the complexity of your web application by splitting it into small and self contained modules (or sub apps). An app is highly extensible, configurable and communicates through event messages.

Wall is inspired by Addy Osmany and Nicholas Zakas work.

Its consistent interface makes developping a web application as easy as playing with legos. You can add, assemble or remove some apps, your application will never break. Most importantly, you can reuse your apps in different projects and save some precious time!

For example, a web application like Gmail would look like:

var wall = require('wall');

wall()
  .use(auth())
  .use(mail())
  .use(spam())
  .use(chat()); //reused in google hangout

Ecosystem

Wall is also an ecosystem of plugins and apps. You can use apps to authenticate your apps, connect to an external service like Facebook or Twitter, store your data and way more in a single line of code.

See wiki for list of third plugins and apps.

Because Wall makes easy to expose and reuse third apps, you won't have to reinvent the wheel or do the same stuff all over again. Instead you'll be able to focus on what makes your application special.

Features and Benefits

Features:

• Event communication bus
• Observable data store
• Elegant dependencies injector
• Lifecycle hooks
• DOM and library agnostic
• High test coverage
• Support all mainstream browsers

At the opposite of many web framework, Wall doesn't make the assumption an app is related to DOM. For example, an app can just process data from a server and be used in a worker. It does not force you to use any libray or template engine. You are free to use whatever you want and to write the code you like.

Actually, an app could use a view plugin piped to the app hooks and events. It makes a flexible and powerful solution to create user interfaces.

var ui = wall()

ui.use(view('hello', '#hello'));
ui.use(view('world', '#world'));

Benefits:

• Loose coupling
• Configurable
• Highly extensible
• hybrid (server side)
• maintainable
• reusable
• scalable

Contribution

I would appreciate any contribution, feedback or support:

• If you have a related app or plugin, add it to this list!
• Bugs, suggestions & feature requests: open an issue
• Twitter: @bredeleca
• Github: bredele

Here's a wish list of plugins:

• ressource (client restful services)
• view (MVVM app)
• web components (register or declare custom tag)
• declarative init (init app with dom el)
• worker (app in a worker)
• mozilla persona (unified sign in)

Browser Support

Store supports all mainstream browsers from IE8+.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014 Olivier Wietrich

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

wall's Issues

use and options

the arguments of use should probably passed as arguments for the event mounted and not as the app store attributes.

CLI

scaffolder

Express plugin

Create an express plugin to use plumby server side as an abstraction of an express app.

localstorage mode

By default store can save data into localstorage, it could be great to store the config for an app.

component and npm fix

I can't use owner-name because there is a bug in component. waiting for new release to fix it.

Routing?

Is there a routing plugin for Wall?
Thanks

Expose store

Should we expose store? Store is higly extendable and has some cool plugins to queue data, map data with a redis db or in real time with a nodejs server, etc. We should at least explain what it is in the 'plugin developer guide'.

need to sandbox emitter totally

emitter biplex

it'll help register services among sub apps.