NOTE: this was the precursor to feather, which now lives here: https://github.com/theVolary/feather

Overview

feather is a full-featured widget-based web framework implemented in pure js. The main goal is to enable rapid development of powerful RIA-type apps (long running single-page applications).

Since this is meant to be a full-featured framework, there will likely be some dependencies (like jQuery and CouchDB, for example). This is not intended to be a bits-and-pieces library where each concern is its own standalone module. Where possible (and sensible), we will work on modularizing certain things, but just keep in mind that that is not a primary goal of the project.

In the end, the intent is to use feather to create a browser-based development platform where real-time collaboration is first-class. Short of that

Features

• Fill
  • This
  • In

Setup and Contribution Instructions

First of all, not to be too obvious but this project requires node.js. Specifically, we intend to support node.js on *nix platforms. I assume the Windows/cygwin flavors of node builds should also work but we aren't going to go out of our way to support it.

• Assumptions
  • you have a github account and understand git and github basics (forking, cloning, etc.)
  • you are running node v0.4.x
  • you have both npm and nvm installed (https://github.com/isaacs/npm) (https://github.com/creationix/nvm)
  • Since this is still very early, I'm also assuming if you're going through these instructions it's because you are a contributor to the project. Thus, I'm going to include some workflow instructions.
  • This is obviously not a requirement, but for sake of convenience I'm basing paths of the following root folder (just because that's our internal convention): ~/mainline
• Setup
  • first, fork the project (via your github account) from https://github.com/ryedin/jojojs
  • clone locally (and recursively to auto pull the submodules), and remember to add the remote to 'upstream' as explained here: http://help.github.com/fork-a-repo/
    • $: cd ~/mainline
    • $: git clone --recursive [your-fork-url]
    • $: cd feather
    • $: git remote add upstream [email protected]:ryedin/feather.git
    • it has been noted that the recursive argument when cloning the repo does not always work so run the following commands
    • $: git submodule init
    • $: git submodule update
  • Feather relies on several dependencies. Most are installed by the setup script mentioned below, but in case any fail, they are listed here. DO NOT RUN THESE MANUALLY UNLESS setup.sh FAILS!
    • Dependencies (this list will change, so please continue to check it, especially as a first place to look if you do an update and run into errors that look like missing dependencies) (NOTE: yes, we plan on create a complete npm-encapsulated package to ease this pain, but for now we're still playing with things too much)
      • $: npm install connect (version 1.4 is required)
      • $: npm install jsdom
      • $: npm install socket.io
      • $: npm install cradle
      • $: npm install yuitest
      • $: npm install daemon
      • $: npm install colorize (Added 5/10/2011; used by the CLI)
    • In featherdoc app
      • $: mkdir node_modules (If this step is omitted, npm will install it in feather's copy of node_modules rather than create the folder for you.)
      • $: npm install node-markdown (required for the featherdoc app)
  • Setup
    • $: bin/setup.sh This will create the FEATHER_HOME environment variable in your user's ~/.bashrc file if it exists. Otherwise it will add them to your ~/.profile file. It will also add feather's bin dir to your path. Finally it will attempt to install all of the dependencies of the framework.
    • open ~/.bashrc and ensure the PATH var in Feather Vars section looks like "export PATH=$FEATHER_HOME/bin:$PATH"
    • At this point, you should be able to run "feather help" and get the usage of the CLI.
  • Symlink Requirements (this section is also subject to change)
    • 5/5/2011: as of today, the symlinks are no longer required.
      • in order to break out of Connect.static's security model, we currently have a symlink requirement for each app (/blog and /test are examples of apps)
      • the symlink must point to the /feather/lib directory and must be named 'featherlib'
        • $: cd blog
        • $: ln -s ../lib featherlib
        • $: cd ../test
        • $: ln -s ../lib featherlib
• Data
  • 3/15/2011: as of today, the blog app now requires CouchDB.
    • install couch via the instructions for your OS (http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Installation)
    • from Futon (http://localhost:5984/_utils/), create a db called "featherblog"
    • if couch is not installed on localhost, edit app.js and modify the hostUrl value in the data.appdb variable
    • start the blog application (See Starting the Sample App below)
    • browse to http://localhost:8080/ and press the Go button where it says "Import the database"
    • refresh the page in your browser. You should now see 3 sample blog entries. If you click on them they should expand to show the full blog post.
• Starting the Sample App
  At this point you should be able to run the blog app and hit it from a browser:
  • $: feather run ~/mainline/feather/blog
  • in a browser: http://localhost:8080/ (replace localhost with the appropriate IP address or hostname if running on a VM... obviously :P)