# Darkside.js
Darkside.js aims to be a lightweight [Node.js](http://nodejs.org/) (server-side JavaScript) framework for building larger web apps.
It leverages the MVC architecture and the dependency injection design pattern.
Darkside.js features most of the components you would expect from a server-side framework:
- an HTTP server
- a WebSocket server (via socket.io)
- a request router,
- controllers
- a model system (entities and repositories) connected to a **MongoDB** service
- a templating engine
> Disclaimer: This is originally a high school graduation project (2012) of [Jan Kuča](http://jankuca.com) from Prague, Czech Republic. This, however, does not mean that the development ended together with his graduation. The project is kept alive and will remain here on Github.
## Installation
Darkside.js is distributed via NPM.
npm install darkside
## Getting started
Your bootstrapping file should look somewhat like this:
```js
var darkside = require('darkside');
var app = darkside.create(__dirname);
app.router.setRouteDeclaration('./routes.declaration');
app.services.setServiceDeclaration('./services.declaration');
app.run(process.env['PORT'] || 5000);
```
You need to declare your routes and your services:
```r
# routes.declaration:
www
/ = 'front:post:index'
/posts/:id = 'front:post:show'
POST /posts = 'front:post:create-post'
m
/ = 'mobile:post:index'
```
```r
# services.declaration:
database
@ = darkside.MongoDBService
name = 'blog'
server = 'mongodb://user:*****@localhost:27017'
@repositories
posts
```
### Controllers
Controller files are located in the `controllers` subdirectory of the specified application directory (`__dirname` in the example above). They are grouped by namespaces.
```
controllers/
front/
PostController.js
mobile/
PostController.js
```
A controller that simply retrieves `Post` entities from the database and populates its views with them would look like this:
```js
var darkside = require('darkside');
var PostController = function (posts) {
darkside.base(darkside.ViewController, this);
this.$posts = posts;
};
darkside.inherits(PostController, darkside.ViewController);
PostController.prototype.$deps = [ 'posts' ]; // dependencies
PostController.prototype['index'] = function () {
this.$posts.all(function (err, posts) {
if (err) return this.$response.end(500);
this.view['posts'] = posts;
this.render();
}, this);
};
PostController.prototype['show'] = function (params) {
this.$posts.one(params['id'], function (err, post) {
if (err) return this.$response.end(500);
this.view['post'] = post;
this.render();
}, this);
};
module.exports = PostController;
```
> Note: The way inheritance and DI are combined might be subjected to a change in the future.
### Views
The templating engine used by Darkside.js is ECO (Embedded CoffeeScript) because of its lightweight syntax.
Template files are grouped by namespaces and controllers:
```
views/
front/
post/
index.eco
show.eco
@layout.eco
mobile/
post/
index.eco
@layout.eco
```
By default, a layout and a content templates are bound to `ViewController` instances.
Content templates are inserted into layout ones as the `content` component.
```html
<%= @component 'content' %>
```
```html
Posts
<% for post in @posts: %>
<%= post.title %>
<%- post.content %>
<% end %>
```