woolly

A tool for building and using simple node.js backends.

The basic idea comes from an observation that most of the screens I write in my apps can be broken down into:

1. state
2. actions on that state

Given the above, I sought to find the simplest interface that would suffice.

To that end, Woolly has two parts. WoollyClient and WoollyServer.

Example Usage

server.js

// Woolly Server
const app = require('express')()
const server = app.listen(3000)

let w = WoollyServer(server)

// This example stores all messages in an in memory map of topicName => [messages...]
let messages = {}

const route = '/topics/:topic'
const getState = ({topic}) => messages[topic] || []
const actions = {
  addMessage: (message) => {
    // Modify the state
    messages[topic] = (messages[topic] || []).concat([message])
  }
}

w.handler(route, getState, actions)

client.js

const WoollyClient = require('woolly/lib/WoollyClient.js')

const client = WoollyClient('/topics/testing', (messages) => {
  //Update the view here
  console.log('topic messages:', messages)
})

client.actions.addMessage({text: `Tick ${new Date()}`})

WoollyServer

API

WoollyServer(server)

Returns a WoollyServer attached to the HTTP server.

WoollyServer.handler(route, getState, actions) : WoollyServer

Makes a resource available at the given route. When a client connects to it, they start receiving its current state as determined by calling getState()

actions is a map of action names to handler functions. After an action is completed, the state is considered updated, and all connected clients will receive the new state.

WoollyClient(uri, onChange) : WoollyClient

Generates a WoollyClient and connects it to the uri provided. When a state change occurs, the onChange handler will be called.

WoollyClient.do(action, params = {}) : Promise

Sends a request for the server to perform the action with the provided params (if any)

WoollyClient.actions.ACTION_NAME(params = {}) : Promise

Each action defined in the server is available by name here and can be invoked.

WoollyClient.on(event:string, callback:function)

Allows clients to register for the events 'ready', 'connected', 'disconnected', and 'error'. Until the ready event is fired, the actions map will be empty.

WoollyClient.disconnect()

Disconnects the client from the WoollyServer