oui

Oui is a kit and framework for building larger websites, in the same fashion as networked and distributed desktop applications.

• All code is modern JavaScript -- Node.js for the server and in the browser at the client side.
• The user interface is completely handled client-side
• Client-server communication is REST-ful and exchange structured data (JSON)
• All JavaScript, HTML and CSS is namespaced (derived from file structure)

Normally this is how rich HTML clients are designed:

This quickly gets messy with large sites and you often end up splitting up content into multiple actual requests simply because there's no better way to structure your source.

Now, Oui takes another approach by letting you structure your content regarding to modules rather than technology:

As soon as any content is modified, an active processor and compiler automatically updates the three final index files -- web browsers get what they want (few requests, optimized structure, etc) and you can structure your work in a logical way (by logical units/modules rather than scattered around in large files).

Features

The server keeps no persistent state, thus allowing for scalability:

• If a server instance dies, nothing can break since there is no finalization process nor any state which can break.
• Secure session support
  • Sessions are transient but buffered in memory for each server instance.
  • Persistent session data is created and updated by user-defined hooks.
  • Authentication tokens cached in sessions and can be wrapped in user-defined types (prototypes).
• Multi-site support
  • Clients connect to different server instances (e.g. host1.server.com:81, host4.server.com:80, etc)
  • Which server instance to connect to is chosen by random (with some weightening) for "new" clients
  • Clients "stick with" a server instance as long as the server does not reply with a 5xx response (in which case the client selects a new server using round-robin).
  • When a server instance fails (crashes) the client will automatically connect to a new backend and re-send the request (which caused the detection of a faulty server).
    • Requests should be transactional and such design is supported by the oui server.
• Built-in authentication
  • Challenge-response with intermediate, cacheable representation
  • User-defineable hooks (both on the server and the client side)
  • Support for custom authentication schemes (e.g. plain text, oath, etc)
  • Sensible defaults (ready out-of-the-box), requiring virtually no programming effort, get you started quickly

Initially developed as part of the 2010 version of dropular.net.

MIT license

Copyright (c) 2009-2010 Rasmus Andersson http://hunch.se/

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.