About

RailwayJS - MVC framework based on Exress. Ruby-on-Rails inspired. It allows you to build web application in minutes.

Installation

Option 1: npm

$ sudo npm install railway -g

Option 2: GitHub

$ sudo npm install https://github.com/1602/express-on-railway/tarball/master -g

Usage

# initialize app
$ railway init blog && cd blog
$ npm install -l

# generate scaffold
$ railway generate crud post title content published:boolean

# run server on port 3000
$ railway s 3000

# visit appp
$ open http://localhost:3000/posts

Participation

Check status of project on trello board: https://trello.com/board/railwayjs/4f0a0d49128365065e008a1d Feel free to vote and comment on cards (tickets/issues), if you want to join team -- send me a message with your email.

Short functionality review

CLI tool

Usage: railway command [argument(s)]

Commands:
  h,  help                     Display usage information
  i,  init                     Initialize railway app
  g,  generate [smth]          Generate something awesome
  r,  routes [filter]          Display application routes
  c,  console                  Debug console
  s,  server [port]            Run railway server
  x,  install gitUrl [extName] Install railway eXtension

railway init [appname][ key(s)] keys: --coffee # Default: no coffee by default --tpl jade|ejs # Default: ejs --db redis|mongoose|riak # Default: mongoose

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

builtin generator: model railway g model user email password approved:boolean # generate User model with fields user, password: String, approved: Boolean railway g post title content --coffee # generate Post model in coffee script syntax

builtin generator: scaffold (crud) railway g scaffold todo title done:boolean --coffee # generate scaffold for Todo model (title: String, done: Boolean)

builtin generator: controller railway g controller sessions new create destroy # generate sessions controller with actions and views

railway server 8000 or PORT=8000 node server - run server on port 8000

railway c - run debugging console (see details below)

railway r - print routes map (see details below)

Directory structure

On initialization rails-like directories tree generated, like that:

.
|-- app
|   |-- controllers
|   |   |-- admin
|   |   |   |-- categories_controller.js
|   |   |   |-- posts_controller.js
|   |   |   `-- tags_controller.js
|   |   |-- comments_controller.js
|   |   `-- posts_controller.js
|   |-- models
|   |   |-- category.js
|   |   |-- post.js
|   |   `-- tag.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
    |-- tsl.cert
    `-- tsl.key

HTTPS Support

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

require('railway').createServer({key: '/tmp/key.pem', cert: '/tmp/cert.pem'});

Few helpful commands:

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

Routing

Now we do not have to tediously describe REST rotes 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 example routes of 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 railway routes command:

$ railway routes
                 GET    /                               posts#index
                 GET    /:id                            posts#show
     sitemap.txt GET    /sitemap.txt                    posts#map
     admin_posts GET    /admin/posts.:format?           admin/posts#index
     admin_posts POST   /admin/posts.:format?           admin/posts#create
  new_admin_post GET    /admin/posts/new.:format?       admin/posts#new
 edit_admin_post GET    /admin/posts/:id/edit.:format?  admin/posts#edit
      admin_post DELETE /admin/posts/:id.:format?       admin/posts#destroy
      admin_post PUT    /admin/posts/:id.:format?       admin/posts#update
likes_admin_post PUT    /admin/posts/:id/likes.:format? admin/posts#likes

Filter by method:

$ railway routes GET
                 GET    /                               posts#index
                 GET    /:id                            posts#show
     sitemap.txt GET    /sitemap.txt                    posts#map
     admin_posts GET    /admin/posts.:format?           admin/posts#index
  new_admin_post GET    /admin/posts/new.:format?       admin/posts#new
 edit_admin_post GET    /admin/posts/:id/edit.:format?  admin/posts#edit

Filter by helper name:

$ railway routes _admin
  new_admin_post GET    /admin/posts/new.:format?       admin/posts#new
 edit_admin_post GET    /admin/posts/:id/edit.:format?  admin/posts#edit
likes_admin_post PUT    /admin/posts/:id/likes.:format? admin/posts#likes

Helpers

In addition to regular rails helpers link_to, form_for, javascript_include_tag, form_for, etc. there are also helpers for routing: each route generates a helper method that can be invoked in a view:

<%- link_to("New post", new_admin_post) %>
<%- link_to("New post", edit_admin_post(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(path_to.admin_posts);
    });
});

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(path_to.admin_posts);
    });
});

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

Generators

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

railway generate [what] [params]

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

$ railway 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.

REPL console

To run REPL console use command

railway console

or it's shortcut

railway c

It just simple node-js console with some Railway 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 callback to fetch result from database, for example. I have added one useful method to simplify async debugging using railway console. It's name c, you can pass it as parameter to any function requires callback, and it will store parameters passed to callback to variables _0, _1, ..., _N where N is index in arguments.

Example:

railway c
railway> User.find(53, c)
Callback called with 2 arguments:
_0 = null
_1 = [object Object]
railway> _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 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

Logger

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

Configuring

Railway has some configuration options allows to customize app behavior

eval cache

Enable controllers caching, should be turned on in prd. In development mode disabling cache allows to avoid server restarting 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

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.