Flayer

Warning! ⚠️

This library is experimental and should be used with caution.

Flayer (short for function layer) is a Node.js library, which allows you to "expose" your TypeScript functions to be directly used by your TypeScript frontend with minimal setup and boilerplate.

Quick start

Server setup

1. Install Flayer to your Node.js backend application

   npm i flayer

2. Write a module file exporting the functions you want to expose

   // ./modules/someModule.ts
   
   export function hello(name: string) {
     return `Hello ${name}!`;
   }

3. Create and start a Flayer server with your modules

   import { createServer } from "flayer";
   
   const server = createServer({
     someModule: require("./modules/someModule"),
   });
   
   server.start({
     port: 1234,
   });

4. Generate a client package on server restart when in development mode

   if (process.env.NODE_ENV === "development") {
     server.generatePackage({
       path: "../server-pkg",
     });
   }

Client setup

1. After generating the client package the first time, install it to your frontend application

   npm i ../server-pkg

2. Configure the client package on app initialization

   import { configure } from "server-pkg";
   
   configure({
     url: "ws://localhost:1234",
   });

3. Start using the backend functions in your frontend code!

   import { hello } from "server-pkg/someModule";
   
   console.log(hello("World")); // "Hello World!"

More detailed examples

Check https://github.com/jlaamanen/flayer/tree/master/examples/01-crud-with-auth for a more thorough example. To try it out yourself, copy the example repository by running:

npx degit jlaamanen/flayer/examples/01-crud-with-auth