Xazure Framework

A light-weight, ultra flexible framework.

Quick Start

npx lerna bootstrap
npx lerna run start --scope @xazure/demo --stream

This will start the server running on localhost:8000.

ALPHA

Xazure CMS and related packages are still in alpha. You are free to use them, but be aware that the APIs or functions may change.

If you are interested in helping out or getting a preview, checkout the Xazure Demo. Get that running and check out the code. I'll update READMEs more and more and begin other documentation as it gets closer to beta. I expect it to progress to beta fairly quickly.

If you have questions in the meantime, feel free to contact me at christian.snodgrass.open@gmail.com or post on StackOverflow with the tag xazure (just make sure the question follows StackOverflow's guidelines).

Philosophy

By default, Xazure framework basically does nothing. This is by design. It gives you full control over what it does by adding modules as you choose. Modules are flexible packages that can do everything from adding data manipulation, new pages, data models, etc.

Technologies

• Express - For serving pages and routing.
• MongoDB - For data storage.
• Xazure Event Manager - An async-first event manager.
• Xazure Logger - An easy-to-use, configurable, extensible logger.

Package Naming Conventions

• xazure - This project, the core of the framework.
• xazure-module-* - A module that works with xazure.
• xazure-template-* - A template for creating some type of package (module, theme, etc.).
• xazure-theme-* - A theme which works with the xazure-module-theme package.
• xazure-logger-* - A logging module for the xazure-logger package.
• xazure-builder-* - A builder for automatically building other packages with xazure.
• xazure-* - Miscellaneous packages, some of which can work standalone.

Build Pipeline

xazure will automatically build package(s) as required (including itself). It will look at the package's package.json for a xazure property. If the property is an object, it will look for the type property, otherwise, it will assume the property is the value it needs.

Note: If you pull down the repo itself, you'll need to run npm run build at least once before you can use the xazure command.

It will then use a xazure-builder-* of that type (e.g., if xazure in package.json is "module", it will use xazure-builder-module to build it). If it doesn't have an appropriate builder, it will first look in the parent of the current directory for a directory named xazure-builder-${type}. If found, it'll run npm run build in that directory and use it. If not, it will attempt to download one for any type value except "custom". If it encounters "custom", it will attempt to run the script xazure:build (or build) or xazure:watch (or watch or start) (depending on if it was started with build, watch, or dev-mode (which also uses watch)). If those commands exist, it will happily use them as appropriate. If they don't, it'll take no action for the package for building (i.e., you have to build it yourself).

If xazure finds the package at the same level as the current package, it will build it. Otherwise it'll assume it's a third-party library and not do anything with it. For example, given the following folder structure:

• projects
  • xazure-demo
  • xazure-module-posts
  • xazure-module-theme

If you run xazure build from the xazure-demo folder, it will also build and link the local xazure-module-posts and xazure-module-theme directories. Any other xazure-* packages it will ignore and just let them be treated as normal NPM dependencies.

Builders exist for the following types:

• builder - Builder for builders themselves, including itself.
• app - Builds a project that contains a config file. Builds module files and config files.
• module - Builds modules
• theme - Builds themes
• logger - Builds xazure-logger modules
• utility - Builds generic utilities (xazure-logger, xazure-event-manager, etc)

Some builders may accept configuration, which can be provided in package.json under the xazure key.

To use the builders, you must have a directory/file structure compatible with the particular builder.

You can run xazure build or xazure watch from any package directory, and it will build or watch that package (note: have xazure as a devDependency). You can also run xazure dev-mode from a project that contains a config file (type === 'app'), and it will build and run everything.

Downside of type: custom is it can't handle restarting the server when it should.

TODO

• Add way to specify HTTP error pages.
• Add error handler registering.
• Add help to CLI.
• Pipeline
  • Add way to have builder config within module itself for 'custom' builds.
  • Add 'jsnext:main' and 'module' into the pipeline, handle in an automatic way
  • Make it not restart things when updating public files
  • Allow xazure to build/watch its own modules
  • When restarting builds, rebuild builders first.
  • Only restart builds that need to be restarted.
  • Add support for custom builds
  • Figure out a way to have xazure dev-mode auto-rebuild core, builder, builder-builder.
  • Figure out a lerna-friendly way to have builder andbuilder-builder, built with builders.
  • Fix potential issue with trying to use builder-builder before it is built.