Darkside.js
Darkside.js aims to be a lightweight Node.js (server-side JavaScript) framework for building larger web apps.
It leverages the MVC architecture and the dependency injection design pattern.
Darkside.js features most of the components you would expect from a server-side framework:
- an HTTP server
- a WebSocket server (via socket.io)
- a request router,
- controllers
- a model system (entities and repositories) connected to a MongoDB service
- a templating engine
Disclaimer: This is originally a high school graduation project (2012) of Jan Kuča from Prague, Czech Republic. This, however, does not mean that the development ended together with his graduation. The project is kept alive and will remain here on Github.
Installation
Darkside.js is distributed via NPM.
npm install darkside
Getting started
Your bootstrapping file should look somewhat like this:
var darkside = require('darkside');
var app = darkside.create(__dirname);
app.router.setRouteDeclaration('./routes.declaration');
app.services.setServiceDeclaration('./services.declaration');
app.run(process.env['PORT'] || 5000);You need to declare your routes and your services:
# routes.declaration:
www
/ = 'front:post:index'
/posts/:id = 'front:post:show'
POST /posts = 'front:post:create-post'
m
/ = 'mobile:post:index'# services.declaration:
database
@ = darkside.MongoDBService
name = 'blog'
server = 'mongodb://user:*****@localhost:27017'
@repositories
postsControllers
Controller files are located in the controllers subdirectory of the specified application directory (__dirname in the example above). They are grouped by namespaces.
controllers/
front/
PostController.js
mobile/
PostController.js
A controller that simply retrieves Post entities from the database and populates its views with them would look like this:
var darkside = require('darkside');
var PostController = function (posts) {
darkside.base(darkside.ViewController, this);
this.$posts = posts;
};
darkside.inherits(PostController, darkside.ViewController);
PostController.prototype.$deps = [ 'posts' ]; // dependencies
PostController.prototype['index'] = function () {
this.$posts.all(function (err, posts) {
if (err) return this.$response.end(500);
this.view['posts'] = posts;
this.render();
}, this);
};
PostController.prototype['show'] = function (params) {
this.$posts.one(params['id'], function (err, post) {
if (err) return this.$response.end(500);
this.view['post'] = post;
this.render();
}, this);
};
module.exports = PostController;Note: The way inheritance and DI are combined might be subjected to a change in the future.
Views
The templating engine used by Darkside.js is ECO (Embedded CoffeeScript) because of its lightweight syntax.
Template files are grouped by namespaces and controllers:
views/
front/
post/
index.eco
show.eco
@layout.eco
mobile/
post/
index.eco
@layout.eco
By default, a layout and a content templates are bound to ViewController instances.
Content templates are inserted into layout ones as the content component.
<!-- @layout.eco: -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<body>
<%= @component 'content' %><!-- post/index.eco: -->
<h1>Posts</h1>
<% for post in @posts: %>
<h2><%= post.title %></h2>
<%- post.content %>
<% end %>