webframe

Webframe is a small and dependency free web application framework.

Usage

Install:

npm install --save webframe

Use:

var webframe = require("webframe");
var app = new webframe.App();

The file example.js contains an example of a small web application.

Why a new web framework?

A new installation of express is 2.3 megabytes. You end up with 42 dependencies in your node_modules directory. The Koa framework is 2.5 megabytes, with 36 dependencies. This isn’t bad for a big web application, but I write a lot of tiny web applications where megabytes of dependencies just feels wrong. As a result, I have in the past often just used the http module directly. This framework is a nice middle ground; it provides some of the utility of big web frameworks, but without adding a ton of extra dependencies to the application.

Documentation

webframe.App([options])

Creates a new instance, with an optional options argument.

Options:

• server: Your own HTTP (like the one created by http.createHttpServer).
• port: The port to listen on. Defaults to the PORT environment variable, or 8080.
• host: The host to listen on. Defaults to “127.0.0.1”. For the server to be accessible to the outside world, listen on “0.0.0.0”.
• client_utils: Whether to add some utility functions to /webframe.js. Defaults to false.
• res404: The string to return for a 404 error. “{{pathname}}” will be replaced with the pathname.
• res403: The string to return for a 403 error. “{{pathname}}” will be replaced with the pathname.

var app = new webframe.App({ client_utils: true });

app.route(method, path [, middleware], func)

Add a route.

• method: What HTTP method the route should be available at. Valid options: “GET”, “POST”, “PUT”, “DELETE”, or “ALL”.
• path: The path. If it starts with a “^”, it will be interpreted as a regular expression (with new RegExp(path)), and the route will be ran on all matching paths. Routes without a pattern are prioritized over those with a pattern.
• middleware: Optional. An array of middleware functions which will be ran before the route’s function.
• func: function(request, response). The function which handles the request.

app.get, app.post, app.put, app.delete, app.all

Utility functions which just call app.route() with a predefined method value.

E.g app.get("/foo", handler) is the same as app.route("GET", "/foo", handler).

app.info(str), app.notice(str), app.warning(str), app.panic(str)

Logging functions. They all print a message. app.panic also exits, and is intended for errors so bad you have to crash.

In the future, it will be possible to control the logging level.

Middleware

webframe.middleware contains middleware for the route functions.

• webframe.middleware.cookies: Adds request.cookies, parsed COOKIE header.
• webframe.middleware.params: Adds request.params, parsed URL parameters.
• webframe.middleware.payload: Adds request.payload, a string (max 50 kilobytes) of the request payload.

In the future, there will be middleware for form data over POST too.

Modifications to the request and response objects

• req.urlobj: The result of url.parse(req.url).
• res.json(object): A utility function to respond with JSON.

webframe.static(root[, before])

Serve static files.

• app.get("^.*", webframe.static("web")) will serve all the files in the web directory, so /index.html will serve web/index.html.
• app.get("^/static/.*", webframe.static("web", "/static")) will serve all files in the web directory under /static, so /static/script.js will serve web/script.js.