Huncwot

Macro framework for monolithic JavaScript applications, batteries included

Huncwot is a macro framework for monolithic web applications built for modern JavaScript with « batteries included » approach. It is an integrated solution that optimizes for programmers productivity by reducing choices and incorporating community conventions.

Website | Twitter

The documentation is a bit outdated. Check the Huncwot Example App for inspiration and guidance.

Features In A Nutshell
Rationale
Getting Started
Usage
- Server-Side
- Component-based
Concepts
- Database
- Handlers
- View
- Routes
- Parameters
- GraphQL
Modules
- Auth
- Static
Examples

Features In A Nutshell

Huncwot bridges client-side (frontend) and server-side (backend) development by using a single programming language - JavaScript - across the board.

The framework draws inspiration from Rails while trying to be less magical, if any at all. In Huncwot, you write your applications using TypeScript. It also comes with a convenient command toolkit (CLI) which wraps over npm scripts

As a secondary goal, Huncwot tries to minimize the dependencies. It uses external packages only if absolutely necessary (e.g. security, OS abstractions etc).

⚙️ Server-side / Backend

Huncwot is as a replacement for Express & Koa to build server-side applications.
Huncwot provides a simpler than Express/Koa, data-driven HTTP handler abstraction.
Huncwot comes with a built-in REST endpoint.
Huncwot comes with a built-in GraphQL endpoint.
Huncwot can collocate GraphQL queries with Vue.js components.
Huncwot provides a data-driven router
Huncwot allows to conveniently set the preferred response format

📊 Client-side / Frontend

... uses Vue.js
... uses Vuex for state management
... uses Webpack 4 for bundling assets
... favors class-style Vue.js components using vue-class-component
... can be used as a convenient boilerplate for Vue.js to build client-side applications
... uses vue-i18n for internationalization

🔐 Security

Huncwot favors Argon2 as a hash function for storing passwords over bcrypt and scrypt. bcrypt lacks memory hardness while in scrypt both, memory hardness and iteration count are tied to a single cost factor. On top of that, Argon2 won the Password Hashing Competition in 2015. It is build around AES ciphers, is resistant to ranking tradeoff attacks and more...
Huncwot uses the node-argon2 package

💻 Command Toolkit

💽 Storage

Huncwot favors plain (old?) SQL queries over ORMs as SQL is one of the most valuable skills
Huncwot provides a SQL-like, data-driven abstractions for the database integration
... uses Sqorn for the database integration which provides a SQL-like abstractions right inside JavaScript
... supports only PostgreSQL
... is unwilling to support NoSQL (Thank you for your help NoSQL, but we got it from here)

🍰 Conventions & Conveniences

Huncwot enforces the Folder-By-Feature Directory Structure

Rationale

Huncwot is being built with battery included approach in mind, i.e. it comes with a (eventually large) library of useful modules which are developped in a coherent way. This stands in direct opposition to Koa approach. Huncwot tries to formalize conventions and eliminate valueless choices by providing solid defaults for building web applications that increase the programmers productivity.

Getting Started

Install huncwot globally to use its CLI commands which simplify frequent operations. You also need to install yarn.

npm install -g huncwot

Generate new application

huncwot new my-project
cd my-project

Start the application using huncwot, hc (alias) or npm

huncwot start

hc start

npm start

Visit https://localhost:8080

Features In Detail

Folder-By-Feature Directory Structure

The directory structure in Huncwot is organized around your application features, and not by type. This means that artifacts, either client-side or server-side are kept togheter. In other words, this approach groups together entities (classes, functions) that actually work together. This leads to high modularity of your application and better cohesion.

The Folder-By-Feature approach makes it easier to find files in your application directory. It is especially visible once your project grows - folder-by-feature is a better long-term approach due its scalability.

To some extend, the Folder-By-Feature approach is similar to how recent frontend libraries and frameworks (React, Vue, etc) group together HTML, JavaScript and Stylesheets. In Huncwot, this simply goes one step further by applying a similar technique to the entire application so that it covers both frontend and backend.

Set The Preferred Response Format

Huncwot determines the preferred response format from either the HTTP Accept header or format query string parameter, submitted by the client. The format query parameter takes precendence over the HTTP Accept header.

Based on the preferred format, you can construct actions that handle several possibilities at once using just the JavaScript's switch statement - no special syntax needed.

const browse = ({ format }) => {
  // ... the action body
  
  switch (format) {
    case 'html':
      // provide a response as a HTML Page
      return HTMLPage(...)
    case 'csv':
      // provide a response as in CSV format 
      return CSVPayload(...)
    default: 
      // format not specified
      return JSONPayload(...)
  }

}

Usage

Huncwot can be used as a replacement for Express or Koa, but it also goes beyond that by providing opinionated choices to other layers in the stack (view, ORM, etc) required to build a fully functional web application.

There are two essential ways in Huncwot to constract a web application: traditional server-side or modern component-based. Nonenthless, those two approaches can be combined in any proportion.

Server-side

This is an example of a basic server-side application in Huncwot. Save it to a file e.g. server.js, run it with node server.js and visit the application https://localhost:5544.

Note Don't forget to install huncwot by adding it to package.json in your project directory followed by npm install. If you're starting from scratch, use npm init or (better) huncwot new described below.

const Huncwot = require('huncwot');
const { OK } = require('huncwot/response');

const app = new Huncwot();

// implicit `return` with a `text/plain` response
app.get('/', _ => 'Hello Huncwot')

// explicit `return` with a 200 response of `application/json` type
app.get('/json', _ => {
  return OK({ a: 1, b: 2 });
})

// set your own headers
app.get('/headers', _ => {
  return { body: 'Hello B', statusCode: 201, headers: { 'Authorization': 'PASS' } }
})

// request body is parsed in `params` by default
app.post('/bim', request => {
  return `Hello POST! ${request.params.name}`;
})

app.listen(5544);

This example shows a regular, server-side application in the style of Express or Koa, e.g. you define various routes as a combination of paths and functions attached to it i.e. route handlers. In contrast to Express, Huncwot handlers only take HTTP request as input and always return an HTTP response: either defined explicitly as an object with body, status, etc keys, or implicitly with an inferred type e.g. text/plain or as a wrapping function e.g. OK() for 200, or created() for 201.

Component-based

Component-based means that pages are built by combining components: an independant chunks of HTML with their own styling and behaviour defined in JavaScript. There is usually only a single page (rendered on the server) to which components are being attached - this happens in the browser (client-side). Routing is usually performed in the browser with paths corresponding to components.

Here's an example of a Vue.js component

<template>
  <div class="content">
    <h2>Counter</h2>

    <div>
      <span class="counter">{{ $store.state.count }}</span>
      <span class="notice">(count is: {{ evenOrOdd }})</span>
    </div>

    <a @click="increment">Increment</a>
    <a @click="decrement">Decrement</a>
    <a @click="incrementIfOdd">Increment if odd</a>
    <a @click="incrementAsync">Increment async</a>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import { mapGetters, mapActions } from 'vuex'

export default {
  computed: mapGetters([
    'evenOrOdd'
  ]),
  methods: mapActions([
    'increment',
    'decrement',
    'incrementIfOdd',
    'incrementAsync'
  ])
}
</script>

<style scoped>
.counter {
  font-size: 5rem;
}

.notice {
  color: #666;
  font-weight: 500;
}
</style>

Concepts

Database

An ORM is at times too much to get data out of the database. Huncwot provides an thin layer of integration with various RDMBS systems using Sqorn. Thanks to this library you can write usual SQL queries, yet fully integrated with the regular JavaScript data structures.

The database configuration is stored config/database.json as a JSON document.

In order to start using the database integration you only need to require huncwot/db:

const db = require('huncwot/db');

Let's see how we can perform some basic and frequent SQL queries in Huncwot

Select

Get all elements with all columns from widgets table; equivalent to select * from widgets:

const results = await db`widgets`;

Get all elements with all some columns from widgets table; equivalent to select id, name from widgets:

const results = await db`widgets`.return('id', 'name');

Get a single element from widgets table by id:

const result = await db`widgets`.where({ id })

Insert/Update

Insert a single element into widgets table:

await db`widgets`.insert({ name: 'Widget 1', amount: 2 })

Insert few elements at once into widgets table:

await db`widgets`.insert([
  { name: 'Widget 1', amount: 2 },
  { name: 'Widget 2', amount: 7 },
  { name: 'Widget 3', amount: 4 }
])

Update an existing element (identified by id) in widgets table:

await db`widgets`.where({ id: 2 }).set({ name: 'Widget 22' })

Handlers

A handler is a module which groups actions. Actions are functions operating in the context of a single route, i.e. actions defined in handlers/widgets/ handle the /widgets route.

Each action defined in a handler is responsible to connect the information received from the incoming request to underlaying data in your application (i.e. fetching/saving/updating) in order to produce a corresponding view e.g. a HTML page or a JSON payload.

Handlers may define up to five action. Each action is placed in a separate file i.e. browse, read, edit, add, delete - in short BREAD (which is a kind of extension of CRUD approach). Each of those functions is triggered by a corresponding HTTP method i.e. browse() and read() by GET, edit() by PUT, add() by POST and finally destroy() by DELETE.

Here's an example of a handler with five actions defined in handlers/widgets/ directory.

Inside handlers/widgets/browse.js:

const { OK } = require('huncwot/response');

async function browse(request) {
  const results = ...
  return OK(results);
}

module.exports = browse

Inside handlers/widgets/read.js

const { OK } = require('huncwot/response');

async function read(request) {
  const { id } = request.params;
  const result = ...
  return OK(result);
}

module.exports = read

Inside handlers/widgets/edit.js:

const { OK } = require('huncwot/response');

async function edit(request) {
  const { id, name } = request.params;
  ...
  return OK({ status: `success: ${id} changed to ${name}` });
}

module.exports = edit

Inisde handlers/widgets/add.js:

const { created } = require('huncwot/response');

async function add(request) {
  const { name } = request.params;
  ...
  return created({ status: `success: ${name} created` });
}

module.exports = add

Inside handlers/widgets/destroy.js:

const { OK } = require('huncwot/response');

async function destroy(request) {
  const { id } = request.params;
  ...
  return OK({ status: `success: ${id} destroyed` });
}

module.exports = destroy

By default, Huncwot will make those actions available under /widgets route through HTTP methods and in accordance to BREAD principle.

View

Huncwot uses Vue.js in the view layer to create and mangage components.

Routes

You can define a route using one of HTTP verbs e.g. .get(), .post(), .put(), .patch() or .delete() - it takes a string which defines a desired path and a function that defines a action which will be exectued once the route is hit. The action takes the incoming request as its parameter and returns a response that will be send to the client. The response is represented as a JavaScript object which must have at least body and statusCode keys. By conventions, a return of string value is considered to be a 200 response of type plain/text with body set to that string. There is also a reply helper function which allows to create responses with application/json type out of JavaScript objects.

Parameters

There are two kinds of parameters possible in a web application: the ones that are sent as part of the URL after ?, called query string parameters; and the ones that are sent as part of the request body, referred to as POST data (usually comes from an HTML form or as JSON). Huncwot does not make any distinction between query string parameters and POST parameters, both are available in the request params object.

GraphQL

Huncwot uses Apollo on the client and on the server. Type definitions are stored at the top level in graphql/. Resolvers may be grouped in modules underneath graphql/ directory. GraphQL service endpoint is /graphql.

Both schema and resolvers can be auto-generated with placeholder data using demo template of huncwot new:

huncwot new --template demo

Here's an example of a Vue.js component with a collocated GraphQL query that communicates with the built-in /graphql endpoint.

<template>
  <div class="content">
    <h2>Widgets</h2>
    <ul>
      <li v-for="widget in widgets">{{ widget.name }}</li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import gql from 'graphql-tag';

const query = gql`
  query {
    widgets {
      name
    }
  }
`

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      widgets: []
    }
  },

  apollo: {
    widgets: {
      query
    }
  }
}
</script>

Modules

Huncwot comes with a set of modules that enable common functionalities

Auth

app.use(auth({ users: { 'admin': 'secret' }}))

Static

app.use(static('./public'))

Examples

3-rd Party Integrations

nunjucks integration

const Huncwot = require('huncwot');
const { HTMLPage } = require('huncwot/response');
const nunjucks = require('nunjucks');

const app = new Huncwot();

nunjucks.configure('views', { autoescape: true });

app.get('/', request => {
  return HTMLPage(nunjucks.render('index.html', { username: 'Zaiste' }));
})

app.listen(3000);

In your project create views/ directory with the following index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>Nunjucks Example</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Hello {{ username }}</h1>
</body>
</html>

Roadmap

Huncwot keeps track of the upcoming fixes and features on GitHub Projects: Huncwot Roadmap

Bug reports

We use Github Issues for managing bug reports and feature requests. If you run into problems, please search the issues or submit a new one here: https://github.com/zaiste/huncwot/issues

Detailed bug reports are always great; it's event better if you are able to include test cases.

huncwot Release 0.59.0

Release 0.59.0 Toggle Dropdown 0.59.1 0.59.0 0.58.0 0.57.1 0.57.0 0.56.0 0.55.0 0.54.0 0.53.2 0.53.1

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