Simple Framework

As the name suggests, this package is a simple framework that allows you to build a working web application framework easily with a limited amount of coding. This project is still a work in progress and was originally created as a submission for the University of Bristol Computer Science (Conversion) MSc. If anyone wishes to contribute, please feel free to submit a pull request.

Usage

var framework = require("simpleframework");
framework.start();

Features

Running this script will operate a built in web server with the following features

• GZIP/Deflate compression
• Delivery of XHTML content-type where supported, otherwise plaintext HTML
• Static file delivery with ETag/304 support to enable client caching
• Dynamic routing of non-static urls to Javascript 'handlers' using 'configuration by convention'
• Automatic binding of handlers to Handlebars templates
• SSL encryption
• Automatically parsed GET/POST data available for use by handlers
• Automatically create/load sqlite database
• Automatically run user provided drop/create script on creation of sqlite database
• Automatic injection of loaded db into user provided db API file, then injection of API into handlers
• In memory session handling

Command Line Arguments

Note that the following command line argument can also be passed into the framework.start() method as an array of strings (including dashes) should you wish to do any more complex processing before starting the server

Argument	Description
--SSHONLY	Server will listen via HTTPS only
--SSH	Server will listen via HTTPS and HTTP
--COMPRESSION	Content will be served using either GZIP or DEFLATE compression if specified in the Accept-Encoding client header

Configuration

When executed, the server will look for config.json which should be located in your project root directory. This file must contain the following keys at its root:

Key	Type	Description
dirs	Object	Locations of framework directories
ports	Object	Ports which the web server will listen on
types	Object	Whitelist containing details of static files which can be served and what directory they can be served from
host	String	Hostname to listen on

Dirs

The dirs object contains locations of all directories used by the framework. It must contain the following keys:

Key	Type	Description
templates	String	Handlebars template
handlers	String	Data handlers
partials	String	Handlebars partial templates
resources	String	Static file directories
database	String	User supplied setup SQL script and database API

Ports

Key	Type	Description
http	Integer	Port number to listen on for the HTTP server
https	Integer	Port number to listen on for the HTTPS server

Types

Each key of the types object represents a file extension for a type of static file that can be served by this framework. Note that if a file extension is not listed in this object, the server will not be able to serve that file. Each type must contain the following keys:

Key	Type	Description
dirs	Array	An array of strings containing the names of all the directories (within the resources directory specified above) that this kind of file can be served from.
type	String	The content type header that this file type will be served with
expires	Integer	How long (in seconds) before this file type is considered 'stale' (for caching purposes)