Impression

A modern web framework for Ruby

What is Impression

Impression is still in a very early stage of development. Things might not work correctly.

Impression is a modern web framework for Ruby. Unlike other web framework, Impression does not impose any rigid structure or paradigm, but instead provides a minimalistic set of tools, letting you build any kind of web app, by freely mixing different kinds of web resources, be they static files, structured templates, Jamstack sites, or dynamic APIs.

Resources

The main abstraction in Impression is the resource - which represents an web endpoint that is mounted at a specific location in the URL namespace, and responds to requests. Resources can be nested in order to create arbitrarily complex routing trees. Impression provides multiple resource types, each customized for a specific use case, be it a JSON API, a set of MVC-style controllers, or a Markdown-based blog with static content.

Finally, any kind of resource can be used as an Impression app. Routing is performed automatically according to the resource tree, starting from the root resource.

The request-response cycle

The handling of incoming HTTP requests is done in two stages. First the request is routed to the corresponding resource, which then handles the request by generating a response.

HTTP requests and responses use the Qeweney API.

Resource types

Impression provides the following resources:

• Resource - a generic resource.
• FileTree - a resource serving static files from the given directory.
• App - a resource serving static files, markdown files with layouts and Ruby modules from the given directory.
• RackApp - a resource serving the given Rack app.

Setting up a basic resource

To setup a generic resource, call Impression.resource and provide a request handler:

app = Impression.resource { |req| req.respond('Hello, world!') }

Running your app with Tipi

Impression is made for running on top of Tipi. Your Tipi app file would like something like the following:

# app.rb
app = Impression.resource { |req| req.respond('Hello, world!') }
Tipi.run(&app)

You can then start Tipi by running tipi run app.rb.

Running your app with a Rack app server

You can also run your app on any Rack app server, using something like the following:

app = Impression.resource { |req| req.respond('Hello, world!') }
run Qeweney.rack(&app)

Creating a routing map with resources

A resource can be mounted at any point in the app's URL space. Resources can be nested within other resources by passing a parent: argument when creating a resource:

app = Impression.app { |req| req.respond('Homepage') }
greeter = Impression.resource(parent: app, path: 'greeter')
static = Impression.file_tree(parent: app, path: 'static', directory: __dir__)

I want to know more

Further documentation is coming real soon (TM)...

Contributing

Contributions in the form of issues, PRs or comments will be greatly appreciated!