Geddy: a small, hackable Web app development framework for Node.js

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Goals

• Make the simple stuff easy without making the hard stuff impossible
• Performance, simplicity, modularity
• Reasonable defaults, easy to override
• Simple API, simple codebase

Geddy should make things easy for the most basic applications, but still let you get under the hood and tinker if you want.

Features

• Powerful, flexible router
• Easy resource-based routing
• App and resource generators
• Content-negotiation
• Templating (EJS), partials support
• Fully non-blocking

License

Apache License, Version 2

Routes

Routes are similar to Merb or Rails routes.

Basic routes

router.match('/moving/pictures/:id').to(
  {controller: 'Moving', action: 'pictures'});

router.match('/farewells/:farewelltype/kings/:kingid').to(
   {controller: 'Farewells', action: 'kings'});

//Can also match specific HTTP methods only
router.match('/xandadu', 'get').to(
  {controller: 'Xandadu', action: 'specialHandler'});

Resource-based routes

router.resource('hemispheres');

Creating a Geddy app

Geddy comes with a utility called geddy-gen you can use to create an app. Run geddy to start the server.

mde@localhost:~/work$ geddy-gen app bytor
Created app bytor.
mde@localhost:~/work$ cd bytor
mde@localhost:~/work/bytor$ geddy
Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Go to http://localhost:8000/, and you should see:

Attention all planets of the Solar Federation

Adding resources

Use geddy-gen resource in your app directory to add a resource. The route will be set up automatically for you.

mde@localhost:~/work/bytor$ geddy-gen resource snow_dogs
[ADDED] ./app/controllers/snow_dogs.js
resources snow_dogs route added to ./config/router.js
Created view templates.

Restart Geddy, and you'll see the new route working. Hit your new route -- for example, http://localhost:8000/snow_dogs.json, and you should see something like this:

{"method":"index","params":{"extension":"json"}}

App layout

After adding a resource, a Geddy app is laid out like this:

mde@localhost:~/work/bytor$ find .
.
./config
./config/config.js
./config/router.js
./app
./app/controllers
./app/controllers/snow_dogs.js
./app/controllers/main.js
./app/controllers/application.js
./app/views
./app/views/snow_dogs
./app/views/snow_dogs/show.html.ejs
./app/views/snow_dogs/add.html.ejs
./app/views/snow_dogs/index.html.ejs
./public

Resources and controllers

Geddy's resource-based routes create url/request-method mappings for easy CRUD operations like this:

GET /snow_dogs
(SnowDogs controller, index action)

GET /snow_dogs/add
(SnowDogs controller, add action, for any new-resource template -- "new" is not usable as a JavaScript action name)

POST /snow_dogs
(SnowDogs controller, create action)

GET /snow_dogs/:id
(SnowDogs controller, show action)

PUT /snow_dogs/:id
(SnowDogs controller, update action)

DELETE /snow_dogs/:id
(SnowDogs controller, remove action)

Content-negotiation

Geddy has built-in ability to perform content-negotiation based on the requested filename-extension.

If you have a JSON-serializable JavaScript object you want to return in JSON format, pass your JavaScript object to the respond method in the action on that controller.

this.respondsWith = ['text', 'json'];

this.show = function (params) {
  // (Fetch some item by params.id)
    item = {foo: 'FOO', bar: 1, baz: false};
      this.respond(item);
};

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Geddy Web-app development framework copyright 2112 mde@fleegix.org.