GoPhast

A simple, customizable backend engine written in Go by Lincoln Anders. GoPhast uses the Gin Framework and a backend pattern developed by Lincoln Anders.

Quickly Run GoPhast

To quickly run GoPhast, ensure Go 1.15+ is installed. You can check that Go is installed by running go version in your terminal. You may then install GoPhast by running go run github.com/lincolnanders5/GoPhast. This will run GoPhast in the current directory.

To change the port to 5000 for example, run

$ echo "port: 5000" > config.yml
$ go run github.com/lincolnanders5/gophast

Route Patterns

GoPhast uses common backend route patterns to remove the backend difficulty common in rolling custom engines.

The following path rules denote their GoPhast URL and destination:

• / -> ./public/html/index.html
• /landing -> ./public/html/landing.html
• /a/main_style.css -> ./public/css/main_style.css
• /api/request_stub -> localhost:4000/request_stub

Static Assets

Assets such as images and PDFs and front-end materials such as JavaScript and CSS files are all pulled from the public directory. Assets will be requested through URLs beginning with the asset_route value and found in the public directory based on the folder named by the file extension. For example, the route /a/main_style.css will find the main_style.css file in the ./public/css directory.

Synonymous file types (such as png, jpg, gif) can be reduced to a single directory with a representative name (e.g. the img directory). All assets will then properly be found in the ./public/img directory when an asset such as /a/minesweeper.png is requested.

Subsites

Subsites may be used when running multiple websites that share static assets. Multiple GoPhast instances may then access the shared static assets while presenting different content through dedicated HTML pages in their subsite directory.

Subsites may be configured with the subsite configuration field, must be located in the public directory, and must be a directory in the format _[subsite].

Note: All static assets may be accessed from all subsites, i.e. the images used for subsite1 may be accessed by subsite2, given the proper URL is accessed.

API Proxying

All requests through routes starting with the api_route value will be proxied through the provided api_host value. Both api_route and api_host must be configured in the config.yml file for API proxying to be enabled.

Configuration

The following fields are valid in the config.yml file:

Field Name	Default	Purpose
name	(none)	If used, displays the configured name for clarity.
port	4000	The port to run GoPhast from
release	false	Whether to suppress stdio logging or not
public	./public	The static asset directory to pull assets from
asset_route	a	The prefix for all static asssets
subsite	(none)	If used, specifies which subsite directory to pull from
api_route	(none)	If used, specifies which routes to proxy to the provided API
api_host	(none)	If used, specifies the API address to proxy API request through

An example of a GoPhast site can be made with the following configuration:

name: GoPhast Example
port: 5000
release: true
public: ./here
subsite: subsite
asset_route: static
api_route: api/v1
api_host: localhost:4000

This configuration will:

1. Run a GoPhast site on port 5000 named GoPhast Example
2. Suppress logging through the release flag
3. Pull assets from the ./here folder (relative to the current directory) when a /static/asset_name.asset_type path is requested
4. Proxy all requests to /api/v1/... through localhost:4000/...

Installing Globally

To install GoPhast, run

$ go install github.com/lincolnanders5/gophast

Note: Install locations depend on your configuration. Check go help install to see where the GoPhast executable will be installed.

You may need to update your $PATH environment variable to include the location of the GoPhast executable. For example, to include the $HOME/go/bin directory, run (or add to your shell configuration file)

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/go/bin

Running Locally

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/go/bin
# Either...
# - Run quickly, in place
go run github.com/lincolnanders5/gophast/cmd/gophast

# - Compile to root level 
go build github.com/lincolnanders5/gophast/cmd/gophast
./gophast