https://github.com/smurfix/deframed

A minimal web non-framework
https://github.com/smurfix/deframed

web

Last synced: 19 days ago
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A minimal web non-framework

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/smurfix/deframed
• Owner: smurfix
• Created: 2020-04-29T09:31:26.000Z (over 4 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2022-07-14T07:05:54.000Z (over 2 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-10-12T01:42:32.827Z (about 1 month ago)
• Topics: web
• Language: Python
• Homepage:
• Size: 99.6 KB
• Stars: 23
• Watchers: 5
• Forks: 1
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.rst

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README

        
========

DeFramed

========

What the …

++++++++++

Deframed is a non-framework for web programming. In fact it is the very

antithesis of a web framework.

Huh?

----

The basic idea of building web pages, these days, is to delegate as much as

possible to the client. The problem is that if you don't want to do that,

but still like to offer a single-page site to your user, you're on your

own.

Why?

----

Well, maybe Javascript is a truly annoying language. To you, anyway. Maybe

your site logic is Secret Sauce and shouldn't end up in the browser. Maybe

your API shouldn't be exposed to the outside world. Maybe you want to tell

the browser what to display. Maybe you just want to build a Web UI that

behaves like any other UI, i.e. read events from the user and tell the

screen what to display, period end of story.

Whatever your reason, DeFramed's purpose is to make sure that you won't

have to deal with programming on the browser side. No more than absolutely

necessary, anyway.

Principle of operation

++++++++++++++++++++++

Client

------

DeFramed displays a generic initial page and starts a small Javascript

handler that connects to a web socket on your server. It then proxies a

handful of DOM manipulation functions and exports a few calls which your

user-facing interface elements can use to send events or data to the

server.

There's also basic support for a client-side spinner, a simple way to show

alerts if/when the connection breaks, templating (with Mustache) so you

don't need to send redundant data, and rudimentary access to local data to

store the equivalent of a cookie and to stash templates on the client. Oh

yes, and some rudimentary DOM manipulation, like adding a class to some

element.

DeFramed also auto-adds "onclick" handlers to each button and "onsubmit"s

to each form (assuming they have an ID and no existing handler), so you

don't have to.

Note the absence of anything that could be interpreted as client-side

logic, which is why DeFramed is a non-framework.

Server

------

If there is zero client-side logic, the server needs to handle everything.

(Which it has to do anyway.) Thus, DeFramed includes classes to support all

of this.

The DeFramed server is based on Quart-Trio, thus it natively supports async

operations. It uses Trio instead of asyncio: cleanly shutting down a

complex asyncio application is a debugging exercise nobody should undergo.

You can ignore the async stuff, but as soon as you call out to a database

you probably don't want to.

Each client's events are processed sequentially, though it's easy to run a

background task – which is guaranteed to get terminated when the client

disconnects or times out.