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Introduction

What is the Code11 Engine?​

Engine is a declarative state management system for creating web applications.

Goals​

Engine strives to build applications with

  • Small codebase. Less code, less bugs, more hairs still on head
  • Less work for computer. Only compute what is needed for faster applications
  • Less work for developer. Minimal API which gets out of developers' way. Allows focusing on business problems, not Engine problems

Principles​

Instead of creating perfect bricks and sticking them together into "the perfect application", mold your application just like you would do with clay. Let it gradually evolve over time without any friction or constraints.

Engine is built with keeping real-world, evolving requirements in mind, and all the challenges that come with it.

Simple views​

A view is just another representation of some data

Views should be as simple as possible. A view does not do anything except:

  1. Render the view it is supposed to display
  2. Change the data it is supposed to represent

Evolving State​

At the core of every UI is a state

The clay of an application is its state. Although the core of the application, state in engine is simply a plain old Javascript Object. As the requirements evolve, so do the state, and views and logic associated with it.

Reactive Computations​

Components, plain data, and computations capable of reacting to changes (called producers) to the data makes an Engine app.

Engine apps are reactive. They start with:

  • an initial state (which can be empty as well)
  • declare views that represent some part(s) of state e.g a TodoListItem component which needs a TodoItem object from state
  • declare computations that depend on some part(s) of state, e.g a doneCounter function which depends on all TodoItems in state to count number of done todos

Engine takes care of updating the view and re-running the computations only when their dependencies from state change. Head over to the Getting started page for a sneak peek into how Engine apps look like, or take a look at the quick start tutorial for a more comprehensive guide to building an Engine app.