coffeecat

Applet Container for NodeJS

About

CoffeeCat provides a containerized system under Express. Containers are full Express applications which are mounted automatically by the server at start up. CoffeeCat provides the structure for loading apps and associating them with paths. It provides a configuration (JSON) based setup for the Express server.

Installation

On Windows, Linux, and Mac OS the installer creates a new service and starts it.

On Unix:

sudo npm install --global --unsafe git+https://github.com/mlaanderson/coffeecat.git

This installs the configuration file in /etc/coffeecat and sets up a single applet for / in /var/coffeecat. The --unsafe flag allows the installer to create those folders and install the service.

If the npm installation fails for access, install using an npm tarball installation:

sudo npm install --global --unsafe https://github.com/mlaanderson/coffeecat/archive/master.tar.gz

To install a specific release (for example v2.1.0):

sudo npm install --global --unsafe https://github.com/mlaanderson/coffeecat/archive/v2.1.0.tar.gz

On Windows:

npm install --global git+https://github.com/mlaanderson/coffeecat.git

This installs the configuration file in %USERPROFILE%\.coffeecat\conf and a single applet for / in %USERPROFILE%\.coffeecat\applets. And installs the Coffeecat service.

Running

To run coffeecat in a console window, just run coffeecat, it will locate and use its configuration file. On Unix, if it was installed with sudo and you want to run as a normal user, use coffeecat -c /etc/coffeecat/server.json.

Configuration

Configuration is done in a JSON file. The default configuration file location is in conf/server.json. An optional path can be used by using the -c flag on the command line. An applet is defined by it's container (web path) and it's path (file system path). Currently, only HTTP, HTTP/2, and HTTPS protocols, with or without WebSockets, are supported.

{
    "autoLoadApplets": "./applets",
    "applets": [],
    "protocols": [
        {
            "name": "http",
            "port": 8080,
            "listen": "0.0.0.0"
        }, {
            "name": "https",
            "port": 8443,
            "listen": "0.0.0.0",
            "ssl": true,
            "cert": "./encryption/coffeecat.crt",
            "key": "./encryption/coffeecat.key"
        }
    ],
    "errorTemplate": "./conf/errors.ejs"
}

autoLoadApplets

Specifies a file system location from which to automatically add applets to the applets array. Applets are sub directories of this location and are loaded by directory name. That is if there is a directory called hello, the applet there will be mounted at /hello. The only exception to this is a directory called ROOT which will be mounted at the webserver root.

applets

An array of applet definitions.

protocols

Currently supports http and https. Defines the ports to listen on, whether it is encrypted, and whether WebSockets are enabled.

IPv6

To listen on IPv6 addresses along with IPv4 addresses, just duplicate the protocol settings and include an IPv6 address.

{
    "autoLoadApplets": "./applets",
    "applets": [],
    "protocols": [
        {
            "name": "http",
            "port": 8080,
            "listen": "0.0.0.0",
            "websockets": true
        }, {
            "name": "http",
            "port": 8080,
            "listen": "::",
            "websockets": true
        }
    ],
    "errorTemplate": "./conf/errors.ejs"
}

HTTP/2

The built-in http2 module for NodeJS does not work as seamlessly with Express as the spdy library. So install the spdy library:

npm install -s git+https://github.com/spdy-http2/node-spdy.git

HTTP/2 is only supported with modern browsers and only with TLS. For Edge and Internet Exlporer, HTTP/2 is only supported in Windows 10 and higher. For Safari, HTTP/2 is only supported in Mac OS X 10.11 and higher. For further compatibility see the CanIUse page.

Configure the SPDY protocol with SSL, identical to an HTTPS configuration:

{
    "name": "spdy",
    "port": 8443,
    "listen": "0.0.0.0",
    "ssl": true,
    "cert": "./encryption/coffeecat.crt",
    "key": "./encryption/coffeecat.key"
}

In the applet, use the extended features of the HTTP/2 protocol to stream additional resources:

router.get('/', (req, res, next) => {
    var stream = res.push('/main.js', {
        status: 200,
        method: 'GET',
        request: {
            accept: '*/*'
        },
        response: {
            'content-type': 'application/javascript'
        }
    });
    stream.end('alert("Hello from SPDY aka HTTP/2");');
    res.render('index',{}); 
});

Where the index template includes <script src="main.js"></script>