Refract File Server Example

Hello! This project allows you to quickly get started with Reason and the Node version of Refract. This example uses a very alpha version of the framework (native is also planned if the concept proves popular). I'd love to get some feedback on it. If you have any comments, please email me at github@ncthbrt.com. Documentation will focus on the parts that early users have the most trouble with, so the more feedback the better.

Refract is a little different to the middleware driven web-server that I'd imagine many web developers are used to. It is inspired by the approach taken by SuaveIO. The key feature to understand in Refract, is that almost everything is a function.
Most functions end in a particular shape, a shape that this library calls a Prism.t.

A Prism.t is a function which takes in a HttpContext.t and returns either Handled with an updated HttpContext, Unhandled, or Error with the error that occurred. The uniformity of a Prism allows for composabilty and error handling without a sea of if/else and switch/match statements.

A note on syntax extensions

Refract comes with a few syntax extensions which I hope will make reading and writing backends more pleasant.

Note that right now, the syntax extensions, such as [%refract.post "/hello/{name:string}/{surname:string}"], let%refract, and %refract.await are only available on OSX. However refract is usable without them. For example:

[%refract.post /hello/{name:string}/{surname:string}] is approximately equivalent (without the named parameters) to:

(f) => Refract.compose(Refract.Request.post, Refract.Request.Pathname.matches(Refract.Request.Pathname.Constant("hello", String(String,End)), f));

let%refract bodyString = Refract.Request.Body.string; is equivalent to:

Refract.Request.Body.string(bodyString => /* rest of expression */);

Finally %refract.await Refract.Response.Body.file("world.txt") is equivalent to

Refract.compose(Refract.Response.Body.file("world.txt"), ctx => ({/* Rest of expression */})(ctx));

Build

npm run build

Build + Watch

npm run start

Installing in other projects

npm install --save refract-server

Add refract-server to the bs-dependencies section of bsconfig.json.

Finally to enable the syntax extensions, add refract-server/ppx to the ppx-flags array.