The easiest web framework for synthesizing API-first web apps that also have web front-ends.
npm install synthThe first back-end framework specially designed for single-page web applications.
Version 0.6.1 (latest):
Note: Despite being fully functional, _synth_ is still in beta. It hasn't been fully tested in production and since it's in active development, implementation and interface details are likely to change.
_Synth_ is an API-first web app framework (built on NodeJS) that provides the following features:
- Easily create new RESTful API resources by just creating folders and naming functions a certain way.
- Preload angular model data on page load (saving an extra roundtrip).
- Preload html view on page load (saving another extra roundtrip!)
- A simplified project structure where front-end code (angular code, html, css, bower packages, etc) is in the 'front' folder and back-end code (node code and node packages) are in the 'back' folder.
- A command-line tool for installing third party packages, using npm + bower, that auto-updates manifest files.
- Auto compilation of assets on request for dev, and pre-compilation for prod (including minification and ng-annotate).
- Auto-restarts the server when changes are detected.
- Support for various back-end and front-end templates to help get a new project going quickly.
For complete up-to-date documentation, tutorials, and example apps, check out synthjs.com.
While Synth is an opinionated framework that provides everything you need to make a great web app, parts of it are available to be used by existing web apps:
- synth-api – Easily generate a back-end JSON API for Express based on your app's directory structure.
- synth-di – The dependency-injection library used by synth-api.
- apiPrefetch.js - Used to take advantage of api prefetching on the front-end.
- heroku-buildpack-synth - Use this buildpack to easily deploy Synth apps on Heroku or other compatible cloud hosting platforms.
- This project was created by Jon Abrams (Twitter | GitHub).
- Thanks to Katie Lefevre for the logo.
- Thanks to Stephen Ausman (aka stackd) for handing over control of the 'synth' package on NPM.