mvcfun

MVCfun

MVCfun is an model-view-controller based web server framework.

Register controllers to ressource paths. You may use regular expressions for this to register a controller to a bunch of paths at once.

This project is under high development and new features pop out every week. Contributers are very welcome.

Quick example

var mvcfun     = require('mvcfun'),
    controller = mvcfun.controller,
    regexp     = mvcfun.regexp;

var server = (new mvcfun.http.Server())
    .listen(8080)
    .on('error', function(err) {
        console.log(err.stack);
        server.close(function() { process.exit(1) });
    });

server.addController(new controller.Static(regexp.files));
server.addController(new controller.Forbidden(regexp.directories));

This creates an http server listening on port 8080. It serves all static files located relatively to the default directory 'htdocs' and forbid any access to directories.

Why MVC

The model-view-controller pattern is well known in web development. Using this pattern makes code more readable and maintable without loosing performance.

Key features

- MVC based developing the cool way
- Easy controller handling
- Maintainable code
- Increadibly fast
- RESTFul developing possible in same framework
- Swig template engine included
- Multi-language page support (including SEO features)
- High unit test coverage

Custom Controller

The main idea of MVCFun is to design your web project based on model, views and controllers. The key part are the controllers, because they connect the models with the views.

Therefore it's absolutely necessary to be able to create custom controllers very easily. This is one main feature of MVCFun.

// The Hello World

var mvcfun     = require('mvcfun'),
    controller = mvcfun.controller,
    util       = require('util'),
    regexp     = mvcfun.regexp;

var HelloWorldController = function(filename) {
    controller.Base.call(this, filename);
};
util.inherits(HelloWorldController, controller.Base);

HelloWorldController.prototype.run = function(resp, path) {
    this.responseManager.writeText(resp,'Hello World!');
};

var server = (new mvcfun.http.Server()).listen(8080);
server.addController(new HelloWorldController('/helloworld'));

If you run this example and surfs at "localhost:8080/helloworld" you will read "Hello World!" as plain text response.

For sure, the controllers should be organized in seperate files (one per controller). The controller can easily require any class to connect to them (models) and use any kind of template engine to create the view. There is build in swig support.

Installation

Fast way using npm

The most simple way to install MVCfun is using npm:

npm install mvcfun

There you will get the last stable release containing all features.

Custom installation

MVCfun is organized in branches. Each branch has its own set of features. For instance the swig branch contains swig binding and a swig base controller.

If you want the naked framework, checkout the minimal branch. You may merge as many of the feature branches together as you want.

The master branch contains all features merged together and the versions published in npm come from the master branch.