bvalosek / robo

A Coffeescript framework for building kickass web applications.

Robo

Great things have small beginnings. Again.

What is Robo?

Robo is a frontend Coffeescript framework that is effectively a combination of micro-libraries, opinionated classes and patterns, and prescriptive project structure and build steps.

Again

Robo has be re-imagined, re-started, and re-written several times. This time, it's in Coffeescript... so it's back to scratch one.

Framework Components

Events

Events are the low-level construct that power Robo's dynamic features. The eventing functions are found on the event/WithEvents class and can be mixed into any class.

It features both the on/off style of setting up callbacks for when an event is triggered, and listenTo/stopListening to invert the responsibility of keeping track of the events.

class Eventer extends Base
  @uses WithEvents # mixin pattern via robo/util/Base

  constructor: ->
    @on alert: (m) -> console.log "alert: #{m}"

a = new Eventer
a.trigger 'alert', 'some message'

Output:

alert: some message

Full documentation for the WithEvents mixin

Observable Objects

Most significant parts of Robo are built around the idea of observable objects. This lets us build dynamic applications that react to data changes and have rich behavior, all handled in a standard way.

Robo comes stock with several observable types: ObservableObject, ObservableList, ObservableDictionary, ObservableSet.

ObservableObject Example

class Person extends ObservableObject
  @observable firstName: 'John'
  @observable lastName: 'Doe'
  @observable fullName: -> "#{@firstName} #{@lastName}"

person = new Person

person.onPropertyChange
  fullName: -> console.log 'full name changed'
  firstName: -> console.log 'first name changed'

person.firstName = 'Bob'

Output:

first name changed
full name changed

Full documentation for Observable mixin

Views and Controls

Data Binding

Full documentation for the Binding class

View Models

Commands

Data Templates

Application, Controllers, and Routes

Models, Queryables, and Data Persistence

Declarative XAML Files

Building with grunt-robo

Testing

Testing requires node/npm and grunt-cli to be installed on your system.

To install all the dev dependencies and run the test target:

npm install
grunt test

License

Copyright 2013 Brandon Valosek

Robo is released under the MIT license.