About

CompoundJS - MVC framework for NodeJS™. It allows you to build web application in minutes.

Compound modules now available at https://github.com/compoundjs

Full documentation is available at https://compoundjs.com/ and using man(1).

Installation

Option 1: npm

sudo npm install compound -g

Option 2: GitHub

sudo npm install 1602/compound

Usage

# initialize app
compound init blog && cd blog
npm install

# generate scaffold
compound generate crud post title content published:boolean

# run server on port 3000
compound s 3000

# visit app
open https://localhost:3000/posts

Short functionality review

CLI tool

$ compound help
Usage: compound command [argument(s)]

Commands:
  h,  help                     Display usage information
  i,  init                     Initialize compound app
  g,  generate [smth]          Generate something awesome
  r,  routes [filter]          Display application routes
  c,  console                  Debug console
  s,  server [port]            Run compound server
  install [module]             Installs a compound module and patches the autoload file

compound init [appname][ option(s)]

options:
  --coffee                 # Default: no coffee by default
  --tpl jade|ejs           # Default: ejs
  --css sass|less|stylus   # Default: stylus
  --db redis|mongodb|nano|mysql|sqlite3|postgres
                           # Default: memory

compound generate smth

smth = generator name (controller, model, scaffold, ...can be extended via plugins)

more information about generators available here: https://compoundjs.github.com/generators

compound server 8000

equals to PORT=8000 node server - run server on port 8000

compound console

run debugging console (see details below)

compound routes

print routes map (see details below)

Directory structure

On initialization directories tree generated, like that:

.
|-- app
|   |-- assets
|   |   |-- coffeescripts
|   |   |   `-- application.coffee
|   |   `-- stylesheets
|   |       `-- application.styl
|   |-- controllers
|   |   |-- admin
|   |   |   |-- categories_controller.js
|   |   |   |-- posts_controller.js
|   |   |   `-- tags_controller.js
|   |   |-- comments_controller.js
|   |   `-- posts_controller.js
|   |-- models
|   |   |-- category.js
|   |   |-- post.js
|   |   `-- tag.js
|   |-- tools
|   |   `-- database.js
|   |-- views
|   |   |-- admin
|   |   |   `-- posts
|   |   |       |-- edit.ejs
|   |   |       |-- index.ejs
|   |   |       |-- new.ejs
|   |   |-- layouts
|   |   |   `-- application_layout.ejs
|   |   |-- partials
|   |   `-- posts
|   |       |-- index.ejs
|   |       `-- show.ejs
|   `-- helpers
|       |-- admin
|       |   |-- posts_helper.js
|       |   `-- tags_helper.js
|       `-- posts_helper.js
`-- config
    |-- database.json
    |-- routes.js
    |-- tls.cert
    `-- tls.key

HTTPS Support

Just place your key and cert into config directory, compound will use it. Default names for keys are tls.key and tls.cert, but you can store in in another place, in that case just pass filenames to createServer function: server.js

require('compound').createServer({
    key: fs.readFileSync('/tmp/tls.key').toString(),
    cert: fs.readFileSync('/tmp/tls.cert').toString()
});

Few helpful commands:

# generate private key
openssl genrsa -out /tmp/tls.key
# generate cert
openssl req -new -x509 -key /tmp/tls.key  -out /tmp/tls.cert -days 1095 -batch

Routing

Now we do not have to tediously describe REST routes for each resource, enough to write in config/routes.js code like this:

exports.routes = function (map) {
    map.resources('posts', function (post) {
        post.resources('comments');
    });
};

instead of:

var ctl = require('./lib/posts_controller.js');
app.get('/posts/new.:format?', ctl.new);
app.get('/posts.:format?', ctl.index);
app.post('/posts.:format?', ctl.create);
app.get('/posts/:id.:format?', ctl.show);
app.put('/posts/:id.:format?', ctl.update);
app.delete('/posts/:id.:format?', ctl.destroy);
app.get('/posts/:id/edit.:format?', ctl.edit);

var com_ctl = require('./lib/comments_controller.js');
app.get('/posts/:post_id/comments/new.:format?', com_ctl.new);
app.get('/posts/:post_id/comments.:format?', com_ctl.index);
app.post('/posts/:post_id/comments.:format?', com_ctl.create);
app.get('/posts/:post_id/comments/:id.:format?', com_ctl.show);
app.put('/posts/:post_id/comments/:id.:format?', com_ctl.update);
app.delete('/posts/:post_id/comments/:id.:format?', com_ctl.destroy);
app.get('/posts/:post_id/comments/:id/edit.:format?', com_ctl.edit);

and you can more finely tune the resources to specify certain actions, middleware, and other. Here are example routes for my blog:

exports.routes = function (map) {
    map.get('/', 'posts#index');
    map.get(':id', 'posts#show');
    map.get('sitemap.txt', 'posts#map');

    map.namespace('admin', function (admin) {
        admin.resources('posts', {middleware: basic_auth, except: ['show']}, function (post) {
            post.resources('comments');
            post.get('likes', 'posts#likes')
        });
    });
};

since version 0.2.0, it is possible to use generic routes:

exports.routes = function (map) {
    map.get(':controller/:action/:id');
    map.all(':controller/:action');
};

if you have custom_controller with test action inside it you can now do:

GET /custom/test
POST /custom/test
GET /custom/test/1 // also sets params.id to 1

for debugging routes described in config/routes.js you can use compound routes command:

$ compound routes
               GET    /                               posts#index
               GET    /:id                            posts#show
   sitemap.txt GET    /sitemap.txt                    posts#map
    adminPosts GET    /admin/posts.:format?           admin/posts#index
    adminPosts POST   /admin/posts.:format?           admin/posts#create
  newAdminPost GET    /admin/posts/new.:format?       admin/posts#new
 editAdminPost GET    /admin/posts/:id/edit.:format?  admin/posts#edit
     adminPost DELETE /admin/posts/:id.:format?       admin/posts#destroy
     adminPost PUT    /admin/posts/:id.:format?       admin/posts#update
likesAdminPost PUT    /admin/posts/:id/likes.:format? admin/posts#likes

Filter by method:

$ compound routes GET
               GET    /                               posts#index
               GET    /:id                            posts#show
   sitemap.txt GET    /sitemap.txt                    posts#map
    adminPosts GET    /admin/posts.:format?           admin/posts#index
  newAdminPost GET    /admin/posts/new.:format?       admin/posts#new
 editAdminPost GET    /admin/posts/:id/edit.:format?  admin/posts#edit

Filter by helper name:

$ compound routes Admin
  newAdminPost GET    /admin/posts/new.:format?       admin/posts#new
 editAdminPost GET    /admin/posts/:id/edit.:format?  admin/posts#edit
likesAdminPost PUT    /admin/posts/:id/likes.:format? admin/posts#likes

Helpers

In addition to regular helpers linkTo, formFor, javascriptIncludeTag, formFor, etc. there are also helpers for routing: each route generates a helper method that can be invoked in a view:

<%- link_to("New post", newAdminPost) %>
<%- link_to("New post", editAdminPost(post)) %>

generates output:

<a href="/admin/posts/new">New post</a>
<a href="/admin/posts/10/edit">New post</a>

Controllers

The controller is a module containing the declaration of actions such as this:

beforeFilter(loadPost, {only: ['edit', 'update', 'destroy']});

action('index', function () {
    Post.allInstances({order: 'created_at'}, function (collection) {
        render({ posts: collection });
    });
});

action('create', function () {
    Post.create(req.body, function () {
        redirect(pathTo.adminPosts);
    });
});

action('new', function () {
    render({ post: new Post });
});

action('edit', function () {
    render({ post: request.post });
});

action('update', function () {
    request.post.save(req.locale, req.body, function () {
        redirect(pathTo.adminPosts);
    });
});

function loadPost () {
    Post.find(req.params.id, function () {
        request.post = this;
        next();
    });
}

Generators

Compound offers several built-in generators: for a model, controller and for initialization. Can be invoked as follows:

compound generate [what] [params]

what can be model, controller or scaffold. Example of controller generation:

$ compound generate controller admin/posts index new edit update
exists  app/
exists  app/controllers/
create  app/controllers/admin/
create  app/controllers/admin/posts_controller.js
create  app/helpers/
create  app/helpers/admin/
create  app/helpers/admin/posts_helper.js
exists  app/views/
create  app/views/admin/
create  app/views/admin/posts/
create  app/views/admin/posts/index.ejs
create  app/views/admin/posts/new.ejs
create  app/views/admin/posts/edit.ejs
create  app/views/admin/posts/update.ejs

Currently it generates only *.ejs views

Models

Checkout JugglingDB docs to see how to work with models.

CompoundJS Event model

Compound application loading process supports following events to be attached (in chronological order):

1. configure
2. after configure
3. routes
4. extensions
5. after extensions
6. structure
7. models
8. initializers

REPL console

To run REPL console use command

compound console

or its shortcut

compound c

It's just simple node-js console with some Compound bindings, e.g. models. Just one note about working with console: Node.js is asynchronous by its nature, and it's great but it made console debugging much more complicated, because you should use callbacks to fetch results from the database, for example. I have added one useful method to simplify async debugging using compound console. It's named c. You can pass it as a parameter to any function requiring callbacks, and it will store parameters passed to the callback as variables _0, _1, ..., _N where N is index in arguments.

Example:

$ compound c
compound> User.find(53, c)
Callback called with 2 arguments:
_0 = null
_1 = [object Object]
compound> _1
{ email: [Getter/Setter],
  password: [Getter/Setter],
  activationCode: [Getter/Setter],
  activated: [Getter/Setter],
  forcePassChange: [Getter/Setter],
  isAdmin: [Getter/Setter],
  id: [Getter/Setter] }

Localization

To add another language to app just create a .yml file in config/locales, for example config/locales/jp.yml, copy contents of config/locales/en.yml to new file and rename root node (en to jp in that case), also in lang section rename name to Japanese (for example).

Next step - rename email files in app/views/emails, copy all files *.en.html and *.en.text to *.jp.html and *.jp.text and translate new files.

NOTE: translation can contain % symbol(s), that means variable substitution

If you don't need locales support you can turn it off in config/environment:

app.set('i18n', 'off');

Logger

app.set('quiet', true); // force logger to log into `log/#{app.settings.env}.log`
compound.logger.write(msg); // to log message

setup custom log dir:

app.get('log dir', '/var/log/compound-app/');

Configuring

Compound has some configuration options allows to customize app behavior

eval cache

Enable controller caching, should be turned on in prod. In development mode, disabling the cache allows the avoidance of server restarts after each model/controller change.

app.disable('eval cache'); // in config/environments/development.js
app.enable('eval cache'); // in config/environments/production.js

model cache

Same option for models. When disabled, model files evaluated per each request.

app.disable('model cache'); // in config/environments/development.js

view cache

Express.js option, enables view caching.

app.disable('view cache'); // in config/environments/development.js

quiet

Write logs to log/NODE_ENV.log

app.set('quiet', true); // in config/environments/test.js

merge javascripts

Join all javascript files listed in javascript_include_tag into one

app.enable('merge javascripts'); // in config/environments/production.js

merge stylesheets

Join all stylesheet files listed in stylesheets_include_tag into one

app.enable('merge stylesheets'); // in config/environments/production.js

Custom tools

Put your function to ./app/tools/toolname.js to be able to run it within application environment as compound toolname command via CLI. See example tool in generated example: ./app/tools/dabatase.js

Optionally you can specify some usage information on your function to be able to see it in list of available commands (using compound command).

module.exports.help = {
    shortcut:    'db',
    usage:       'db [migrate|update]',
    description: 'Migrate or update database(s)'
};

MIT License

Copyright (C) 2011 by Anatoliy Chakkaev 

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.