Koji Core

Core library for developing customizable Koji apps.

Overview

The @withkoji/core package enables you to implement core platform features in your Koji app, including customization, in-app purchases, UI controls, messaging, and identity services.

Installation

Install the package in the frontend and backend services of your Koji project.

npm install @withkoji/core

Basic use

The @withkoji/core package provides a set of modules that are specific to client and server behaviors.

Frontend

Import the package in your frontend code.

import Koji from '@withkoji/core';

Initialize the package with your configuration data.

// Initialize
Koji.config(require('././koji.json'));

// render
render();

Indicate that the application is ready to start receiving events.

Koji.ready();

Enable the user to upload an image from the frontend of the Koji app.

import Koji from '@withkoji/core';

const captureImage = async () => {
  const imageURL = await Koji.ui.capture.image();

  console.log(imageURL); // The publicly accessible, CDN-backed path of the user's uploaded image
}

Backend

Import the package in your backend code.

import { KojiBackend } from '@withkoji/core';

Initialize the package with your configuration data, and use KojiBackend.middleware to scope operations for each customized version of the app. Add routes for backend operations (for example, use a Koji database).

import { KojiBackend } from '@withkoji/core';
import cors from 'cors';
import express from 'express';
import bodyParser from 'body-parser';

// Import our configuration
import kojiConfig from '../../koji.json';

// Init
const app = express();

// Enable cors for preflight
app.options('*', cors());

// Whitelist all routes with cors
app.use(cors());

// Use express json
app.use(express.json());

// Parse application/json
app.use(bodyParser.json());

// Use Koji's middleware to handle scoping across customized versions of the app
app.use(KojiBackend.middleware(kojiConfig));

// Disable caching
app.use((req, res, next) => {
  res.header('Cache-Control', 'private, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate');
  res.header('Expires', '-1');
  res.header('Pragma', 'no-cache');
  next();
});

// Add routes here - for example:
app.get('/data', (req, res, next) => {
  const database = new KojiBackend.Database({ res });

  // Look up an item in the items collection
  const item = await database.get('items', 'myItemId');

  res.status(200).json({
    item,
  });
});

// Start server
app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3333, null, async (err) => {
  if (err) {
    console.log(err.message);
  }
  console.log('[koji] backend started');
});

Generating documentation locally

This package uses TypeDoc comments for documentation. The latest version of the documentation is available online at the Koji developer site. However, you can also generate the package documentation locally for offline reference.

• To generate an HTML version of the documentation, run npm run doc and open the resulting docs folder in your favorite HTML viewer or browser.

• To generate the underlying JSON content for the documentation, run npm run json-doc. This command will output a koji-core-docs.json file that you can use as a data source for your favorite parser or static site generator.

Related resources

• Package documentation
• Tutorial: Koji quick start
• Migrating to the Koji core package
• Koji homepage

Contributions and questions

See the contributions page on the developer site for general info on how to make contributions to Koji repositories and developer documentation.

For any questions, reach out to the developer community or the @Koji Team on our Discord server.

Developing for the Koji Core package

If you would like to test or develop new features for the package, here are a few steps that will get you up and running quickly.

Note: These steps assume you're already using the @withkoji/core package, installed via npm.

1. Clone this repository to your local machine.
2. In the package's root folder, run npm install to install the required dev dependencies.
3. Start the build watcher by running npm run watch in the package's root folder.
4. (Optional) Start the declarations watcher by running npm run watch-declarations in the package's root folder.
5. In your consumer project, remove the existing installation: npm remove @withkoji/core.
6. In your consumer project, install the local package by referencing the folder where you cloned the repo. For example: npm install ~/YourComputer/koji-core.

If everything went well, your consumer project should now be referencing your local installation.

Notes:

• If your consumer project offers hot reloading, you should see updates made to the package recompiled by the watcher and injected into your project automatically.

• If your consumer project does not offer hot reloading (for example, an Express app), you'll need to quit the process and restart to get any watched changes to the package.

• If you run the declarations watcher, you should also get real-time updates in your IDE for types and documentation. In some instances, you may need to refresh or reload your IDE's view to clear any cached values.

• Because the dist folder is not bundled into the repo, you may need to run a build or include it in a commit if you are testing an installation via Github. Another approach is to install the sources with npm install https://github.com/madewithkoji/koji-core/tarball/{your-branch-name} and add required build steps to koji.json

Roadmap

• Convert existing packages (koji-vcc, koji-database, etc.) to a single package
• Implement single instance to prevent race conditions/multiple sources of truth
• Implement TypeScript best practices
• Implement development tooling
• Support https://unpkg.com/
• Improve TypeDoc implementation
• Improve test coverage
• Reduce bundle size
• Auto-magical e2e testing in the debugger