impress

Enterprise application server for Node.js: secure, lightweight, interactive, and scalable.

Description

First Node.js server scaled with multithreading and extra thin workload isolation. Optimized for high-intensive data exchange, rapid development, and clean architecture. Provides everything you need out of the box for reliable and efficient backend, network communication with web and mobile clients, protocol-agnostic API, run-time type validation, real-time and in-memory data processing, and reliable stateful services.

Weak sides: not a good choice for content publishing including blogs and online stores, server-side rendering, serving static content and stateless services.

Strong sides: security and architecture for enterprise-level applications, long-lived connections over websocket to minimize overhead for cryptographic handshake, no third-party dependencies.

Quick start

• See project template: metarhia/Example
• Start server with node server.js
• See documentation and specifications

API endpoint example: application/api/example.1/citiesByCountry.js

async ({ countryId }) => {
  const fields = ['cityId', 'name'];
  const where = { countryId };
  const data = await db.select('City', fields, where);
  return { result: 'success', data };
};

You can call it from client-side:

const res = await metacom.api.example.citiesByCountry({ countryId: 3 });

Metarhia and impress application server way

• Applied code needs to be simple and secure, so we use sandboxing with v8 isolated contexts, worker threads and javascript closures;
• Domain code should be separated from system code; so we use DDD, layered (onion) architecture, DI, SOLID and GRASP principles, contract-based approach;
• Impress supports stateful applications with RPC and client-session sticky to servers; microservices, centralized or distributed architecture;
• No I/O is faster even than async I/O, so we hold state in memory, share it among multiple threads and use lazy I/O for persistent storage;
• We use just internal trusted dependencies, no third-party npm packages; total Metarhia technology stack size is less than 2mb.

Features

• API auto-routing calls to endpoint for rapid API development (no need to add routes manually)
• API concurrency: request execution timeout and execution queue with both timeout and size limitations
• Schemas for API contract, data structures validation, and domain models
• Application server supports different API styles: RPC over AJAX and over Websocket, REST, and web hooks
• Multiple protocols support: HTTP, HTTPS, WS, WSS
• Auto loader with start hooks, namespace generation for code and dependencies
• Live reload of code through filesystem watch
• Graceful shutdown with stop hooks
• Minimal dependencies and reduced code size
• Layered architecture: api, domain logic, data access layer, and system code layer (hidden)
• Code sandboxing for enhanced security and execution context isolation
• Code protection: reference pollution prevention, prototype pollution prevention
• Multi-threading for CPU utilization and execution isolation
• Load balancing for simple scaling with redirection to multiple ports
• Caching: in-memory caching for APIs and static files
• Configuration: environment-specific application settings
• Database access layer compatible with PostgreSQL with SQL-injection protection
• Persistent sessions with authentication, groups, and anonymous sessions
• Buffered logging (lazy write) with log rotation (keep logs N days) and console interface
• Testing: integrated node.js native test runner and table-test support
• Inter-process communication and shared memory used for state management
• File utilities: upload, download, support for partial content and streaming
• Task Management: scheduled task execution at specific intervals or certain times

TODO list

Those features will be implemented in nearest future (3-6 months):

• Server health monitoring
• Database migrations
• State synchronization mechanism with transactions and subscription
• Multi-tenancy support

Requirements

• Node.js v18.x or v20.x
• Linux (tested on Fedora v36-38, Ubuntu v18-23, CentOS v8-9)
• Postgresql v11-16
• OpenSSL v3 or later (optional, for https & wss)
• certbot (recommended but optional)

License & Contributors

Copyright (c) 2012-2024 Metarhia contributors. See github for full contributors list. Impress Application Server is MIT licensed. Project coordinator: <[e-mail]>

Changelog

[3.0.16][] - 2024-09-01

• Update eslint to 9.x and prettier with configs
• Add node.js 22 to CI