Introduction

What is Ramber?

Ramber is a framework for building extremely high-performance web apps. You're looking at one right now! There are two basic concepts:

• Each page of your app is a Hamber component
• You create pages by adding files to the src/routes directory of your project. These will be server-rendered so that a user's first visit to your app is as fast as possible, then a client-side app takes over

Building an app with all the modern best practices — code-splitting, offline support, server-rendered views with client-side hydration — is fiendishly complicated. Ramber does all the boring stuff for you so that you can get on with the creative part.

You don't need to know Hamber to understand the rest of this guide, but it will help. In short, it's a UI framework that compiles your components to highly optimized vanilla JavaScript.

Why the name?

In war, the soldiers who build bridges, repair roads, clear minefields and conduct demolitions — all under combat conditions — are known as rambers.

For web developers, the stakes are generally lower than for combat engineers. But we face our own hostile environment: underpowered devices, poor network connections, and the complexity inherent in front-end engineering. Ramber, which is short for Svelte app maker, is your courageous and dutiful ally.

Comparison with Next.js

Next.js is a React framework from Zeit, and is the inspiration for Ramber. There are a few notable differences, however:

• Ramber is powered by Hamber instead of React, so it's faster and your apps are smaller
• Instead of route masking, we encode route parameters in filenames (see the routing section below)
• As well as pages, you can create server routes in your src/routes directory. This makes it very easy to, for example, add a JSON API such as the one powering this very page (try visiting /docs.json)
• Links are just <a> elements, rather than framework-specific <Link> components. That means, for example, that this link right here, despite being inside a blob of markdown, works with the router as you'd expect

Getting started

The easiest way to start building a Ramber app is to clone the ramber-template repo

npx degit hamberjs/ramber-template#rollup my-app
# or: npx degit hamberjs/ramber-template#webpack my-app
cd my-app
npm install
npm run dev

This will scaffold a new project in the my-app directory, install its dependencies, and start a server on localhost:3000. Try editing the files to get a feel for how everything works – you may not need to bother reading the rest of this guide!

Ramber app structure

This section is a reference for the curious. We recommend you play around with the project template first, and come back here when you've got a feel for how things fit together.

If you take a look inside the ramber-template repo, you'll see some files that Ramber expects to find:

├ package.json
├ src
│ ├ routes
│ │ ├ # your routes here
│ │ ├ _error.hamber
│ │ └ index.hamber
│ ├ client.js
│ ├ server.js
│ ├ service-worker.js
│ └ template.html
├ static
│ ├ # your files here
└ rollup.config.js / webpack.config.js

When you first run Ramber, it will create an additional __ramber__ directory containing generated files.

You can create these files from scratch, but it's much better to use the template. See getting started for instructions on how to easily clone it

package.json

Your package.json contains your app's dependencies and defines a number of scripts:

• npm run dev — start the app in development mode, and watch source files for changes
• npm run build — build the app in production mode
• npm run export — bake out a static version, if applicable (see exporting)
• npm start — start the app in production mode after you've built it

src

This contains the three entry points for your app — src/client.js, src/server.js and (optionally) src/service-worker.js — along with a src/template.html file.

src/client.js

This must import, and call, the start function from the generated @ramber/app module:

import * as ramber from '@ramber/app';

ramber.start({
	target: document.querySelector('#ramber')
});

In many cases, that's the entirety of your entry module, though you can do as much or as little here as you wish. See the client API section for more information on functions you can import.

src/server.js

This is a normal Express (or Polka, etc) app, with three requirements:

• it should serve the contents of the static folder, using for example sirv
• it should call app.use(ramber.middleware()) at the end, where ramber is imported from @ramber/server
• it must listen on process.env.PORT

Beyond that, you can write the server however you like.

src/service-worker.js

Service workers act as proxy servers that give you fine-grained control over how to respond to network requests. For example, when the browser requests /goats.jpg, the service worker can respond with a file it previously cached, or it can pass the request on to the server, or it could even respond with something completely different, such as a picture of llamas.

Among other things, this makes it possible to build applications that work offline.

Because every app needs a slightly different service worker (sometimes it's appropriate to always serve from the cache, sometimes that should only be a last resort in case of no connectivity), Ramber doesn't attempt to control the service worker. Instead, you write the logic in service-worker.js. You can import any of the following from @ramber/service-worker:

• files — an array of files found in the static directory
• shell — the client-side JavaScript generated by the bundler (Rollup or webpack)
• routes — an array of { pattern: RegExp } objects you can use to determine whether a Ramber-controlled page is being requested
• timestamp — the time the service worker was generated (useful for generating unique cache names)

src/template.html

This file is a template for responses from the server. Ramber will inject content that replaces the following tags:

• %ramber.base% — a <base> element (see base URLs)
• %ramber.styles% — critical CSS for the page being requested
• %ramber.head% — HTML representing page-specific <head> contents, like <title>
• %ramber.html% — HTML representing the body of the page being rendered
• %ramber.scripts% — script tags for the client-side app

src/routes

This is the meat of your app — the pages and server routes. See the section on routing for the juicy details.

static

This is a place to put any files that your app uses — fonts, images and so on. For example static/favicon.png will be served as /favicon.png.

Ramber doesn't serve these files — you'd typically use sirv or serve-static for that — but it will read the contents of the static folder so that you can easily generate a cache manifest for offline support (see service-worker.js).

rollup.config.js / webpack.config.js

Ramber can use Rollup or webpack to bundle your app. You probably won't need to change the config, but if you want to (for example to add new loaders or plugins), you can.

Routing

As we've seen, there are two types of route in Ramber — pages, and server routes.

Pages

Pages are Hamber components written in .hamber files. When a user first visits the application, they will be served a server-rendered version of the route in question, plus some JavaScript that 'hydrates' the page and initialises a client-side router. From that point forward, navigating to other pages is handled entirely on the client for a fast, app-like feel.

The filename determines the route. For example, src/routes/index.hamber is the root of your site:

<!-- src/routes/index.hamber -->
<hamber:head>
	<title>Welcome</title>
</hamber:head>

<h1>Hello and welcome to my site!</h1>

A file called either src/routes/about.hamber or src/routes/about/index.hamber would correspond to the /about route:

<!-- src/routes/about.hamber -->
<hamber:head>
	<title>About</title>
</hamber:head>

<h1>About this site</h1>
<p>TODO...</p>

Dynamic parameters are encoded using [brackets]. For example, here's how you could create a page that renders a blog post:

<!-- src/routes/blog/[slug].hamber -->
<script context="module">
	// the (optional) preload function takes a
	// `{ path, params, query }` object and turns it into
	// the data we need to render the page
	export async function preload(page, session) {
		// the `slug` parameter is available because this file
		// is called [slug].hamber
		const { slug } = page.params;

		// `this.fetch` is a wrapper around `fetch` that allows
		// you to make credentialled requests on both
		// server and client
		const res = await this.fetch(`blog/${slug}.json`);
		const article = await res.json();

		return { article };
	}
</script>

<script>
	export let article;
</script>

<hamber:head>
	<title>{article.title}</title>
</hamber:head>

<h1>{article.title}</h1>

<div class='content'>
	{@html article.html}
</div>

See the section on preloading for more info about preload and this.fetch

Server routes

Server routes are modules written in .js files that export functions corresponding to HTTP methods. Each function receives HTTP request and response objects as arguments, plus a next function. This is useful for creating a JSON API. For example, here's how you could create an endpoint that served the blog page above:

// routes/blog/[slug].json.js
import db from './_database.js'; // the underscore tells Ramber this isn't a route

export async function get(req, res, next) {
	// the `slug` parameter is available because this file
	// is called [slug].json.js
	const { slug } = req.params;

	const article = await db.get(slug);

	if (article !== null) {
		res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json');
		res.end(JSON.stringify(article));
	} else {
		next();
	}
}

delete is a reserved word in JavaScript. To handle DELETE requests, export a function called del instead.

File naming rules

There are three simple rules for naming the files that define your routes:

• A file called src/routes/about.hamber corresponds to the /about route. A file called src/routes/blog/[slug].hamber corresponds to the /blog/:slug route, in which case params.slug is available to preload
• The file src/routes/index.hamber corresponds to the root of your app. src/routes/about/index.hamber is treated the same as src/routes/about.hamber.
• Files and directories with a leading underscore do not create routes. This allows you to colocate helper modules and components with the routes that depend on them — for example you could have a file called src/routes/_helpers/datetime.js and it would not create a /_helpers/datetime route

Error page

In addition to regular pages, there is a 'special' page that Ramber expects to find — src/routes/_error.hamber. This will be shown when an error occurs while rendering a page.

The error object is made available to the template along with the HTTP status code.

Regexes in routes

You can use a subset of regular expressions to qualify route parameters, by placing them in parentheses after the parameter name.

For example, src/routes/items/[id([0-9]+)].hamber would only match numeric IDs — /items/123 would match, but /items/xyz would not.

Because of technical limitations, the following characters cannot be used: /, \, ?, :, ( and ).

Client API

The @ramber/app module, which is generated by Ramber based on the shape of your app, contains functions for controlling Ramber programmatically and responding to events.

start({ target })

• target — an element to render pages to

This configures the router and starts the application — listens for clicks on <a> elements, interacts with the history API, and renders and updates your Hamber components.

Returns a Promise that resolves when the initial page has been hydrated.

import * as ramber from '@ramber/app';

ramber.start({
	target: document.querySelector('#ramber')
}).then(() => {
	console.log('client-side app has started');
});

goto(href, options?)

• href — the page to go to
• options — can include a replaceState property, which determines whether to use history.pushState (the default) or history.replaceState). Not required

Programmatically navigates to the given href. If the destination is a Ramber route, Ramber will handle the navigation, otherwise the page will be reloaded with the new href. (In other words, the behaviour is as though the user clicked on a link with this href.)

prefetch(href)

• href — the page to prefetch

Programmatically prefetches the given page, which means a) ensuring that the code for the page is loaded, and b) calling the page's preload method with the appropriate options. This is the same behaviour that Ramber triggers when the user taps or mouses over an <a> element with rel=prefetch.

prefetchRoutes(routes?)

• routes — an optional array of strings representing routes to prefetch

Programmatically prefetches the code for routes that haven't yet been fetched. Typically, you might call this after ramber.start() is complete, to speed up subsequent navigation (this is the 'L' of the PRPL pattern). Omitting arguments will cause all routes to be fetched, or you can specify routes by any matching pathname such as /about (to match src/routes/about.hamber) or /blog/* (to match src/routes/blog/[slug].hamber). Unlike prefetch, this won't call preload for individual pages.

Preloading

As seen in the routing section, page components can have an optional preload function that will load some data that the page depends on. This is similar to getInitialProps in Next.js or asyncData in Dorayaki.js.

<script context="module">
	export async function preload(page, session) {
		const { slug } = page.params;

		const res = await this.fetch(`blog/${slug}.json`);
		const article = await res.json();

		return { article };
	}
</script>

It lives in a context="module" script — see the tutorial — because it's not part of the component instance itself; instead, it runs before the component is created, allowing you to avoid flashes while data is fetched.

Argument

The preload function receives two arguments — page and session.

page is a { path, params, query } object where path is the URL's pathname, params is derived from path and the route filename, and query is an object of values in the query string.

So if the example above was src/routes/blog/[slug].hamber and the URL was /blog/some-post?foo=bar&baz, the following would be true:

• page.path === '/blog/some-post'
• page.params.slug === 'some-post'
• page.query.foo === 'bar'
• page.query.baz === true

session is generated on the server by the session option passed to ramber.middleware (TODO this needs further documentation. Perhaps a server API section?)

Return value

If you return a Promise from preload, the page will delay rendering until the promise resolves. You can also return a plain object.

When Ramber renders a page on the server, it will attempt to serialize the resolved value and include it on the page, so that the client doesn't also need to call preload upon initialization. Serialization will fail if the value includes functions or custom classes (cyclical and repeated references are fine, as are built-ins like Date, Map, Set and RegExp).

Context

Inside preload, you have access to three methods:

• this.fetch(url, options)
• this.error(statusCode, error)
• this.redirect(statusCode, location)

this.fetch

In browsers, you can use fetch to make AJAX requests, for getting data from your server routes (among other things). On the server it's a little trickier — you can make HTTP requests, but you must specify an origin, and you don't have access to cookies. This means that it's impossible to request data based on the user's session, such as data that requires you to be logged in.

To fix this, Ramber provides this.fetch, which works on the server as well as in the client:

<script context="module">
	export async function preload() {
		const res = await this.fetch(`secret-data.json`, {
			credentials: 'include'
		});

		// ...
	}
</script>

Note that you will need to use session middleware such as express-session in your app/server.js in order to maintain user sessions or do anything involving authentication.

this.error

If the user navigated to /blog/some-invalid-slug, we would want to render a 404 Not Found page. We can do that with this.error:

<script context="module">
	export async function preload({ params, query }) {
		const { slug } = params;

		const res = await this.fetch(`blog/${slug}.json`);

		if (res.status === 200) {
			const article = await res.json();
			return { article };
		}

		this.error(404, 'Not found');
	}
</script>

The same applies to other error codes you might encounter.

this.redirect

You can abort rendering and redirect to a different location with this.redirect:

<script context="module">
	export async function preload(page, session) {
		const { user } = session;

		if (!user) {
			return this.redirect(302, 'login');
		}

		return { user };
	}
</script>

Layouts

So far, we've treated pages as entirely standalone components — upon navigation, the existing component will be destroyed, and a new one will take its place.

But in many apps, there are elements that should be visible on every page, such as top-level navigation or a footer. Instead of repeating them in every page, we can use layout components.

To create a layout component that applies to every page, make a file called src/routes/_layout.hamber. The default layout component (the one that Ramber uses if you don't bring your own) looks like this...

<slot></slot>

...but we can add whatever markup, styles and behaviour we want. For example, let's add a nav bar:

<!-- src/routes/_layout.hamber -->
<nav>
	<a href=".">Home</a>
	<a href="about">About</a>
	<a href="settings">Settings</a>
</nav>

<slot></slot>

If we create pages for /, /about and /settings...

<!-- src/routes/index.hamber -->
<h1>Home</h1>

<!-- src/routes/about.hamber -->
<h1>About</h1>

<!-- src/routes/settings.hamber -->
<h1>Settings</h1>

...the nav will always be visible, and clicking between the three pages will only result in the <h1> being replaced.

Nested routes

Suppose we don't just have a single /settings page, but instead have nested pages like /settings/profile and /settings/notifications with a shared submenu (for an real-life example, see github.com/settings).

We can create a layout that only applies to pages below /settings (while inheriting the root layout with the top-level nav):

<!-- src/routes/settings/_layout.hamber -->
<h1>Settings</h1>

<div class="submenu">
	<a href="settings/profile">Profile</a>
	<a href="settings/notifications">Notifications</a>
</div>

<slot></slot>

Layout components receive a segment property which is useful for things like styling:

+<script>
+    export let segment;
+</script>
+
<div class="submenu">
-    <a href="settings/profile">Profile</a>
-    <a href="settings/notifications">Notifications</a>
+    <a
+        class:selected={segment === "profile"}
+        href="settings/profile"
+    >Profile</a>
+
+    <a
+        class:selected={segment === "notifications"}
+        href="settings/notifications"
+    >Notifications</a>
</div>

Server-side rendering

Ramber, by default, renders server-side first (SSR), and then re-mounts any dynamic elements on the client. Hamber provides excellent support for this. This has benefits in performance and search engine indexing, among others, but comes with its own set of complexities.

Making a component SSR compatible

Ramber works well with most third-party libraries you are likely to come across. However, sometimes, a third-party library comes bundled in a way which allows it to work with multiple different module loaders. Sometimes, this code creates a dependency on window, such as checking for the existence of window.global might do.

Since there is no window in a server-side environment like Ramber's, the action of simply importing such a module can cause the import to fail, and terminate the Ramber's server with an error such as:

ReferenceError: window is not defined

The way to get around this is to use a dynamic import for your component, from within the onMount function (which is only called on the client), so that your import code is never called on the server.

<script>
	import { onMount } from 'hamber';

	let MyComponent;

	onMount(async () => {
		const module = await import('my-non-ssr-component');
		MyComponent = module.default;
	});
</script>

<hamber:component this={MyComponent} foo="bar"/>

Stores

The page and session values passed to preload functions are available to components as stores, along with preloading.

Inside a component, get references to the stores like so:

<script>
	import { stores } from '@ramber/app';
	const { preloading, page, session } = stores();
</script>

• preloading contains a readonly boolean value, indicating whether or not a navigation is pending
• page contains a readonly { path, params, query } object, identical to that passed to preload functions
• session contains whatever data was seeded on the server. It is a writable store, meaning you can update it with new data (for example, after the user logs in) and your app will be refreshed

Seeding session data

On the server, you can populate session by passing an option to ramber.middleware:

// src/server.js
express() // or Polka, or a similar framework
	.use(
		serve('assets'),
		authenticationMiddleware(),
		ramber.middleware({
			session: (req, res) => ({
				user: req.user
			})
		})
	)
	.listen(process.env.PORT);

Session data must be serializable — no functions or custom classes, just built-in JavaScript data types

Prefetching

Ramber uses code splitting to break your app into small chunks (one per route), ensuring fast startup times.

For dynamic routes, such as our src/routes/blog/[slug].hamber example, that's not enough. In order to render the blog post, we need to fetch the data for it, and we can't do that until we know what slug is. In the worst case, that could cause lag as the browser waits for the data to come back from the server.

rel=prefetch

We can mitigate that by prefetching the data. Adding a rel=prefetch attribute to a link...

<a rel=prefetch href='blog/what-is-ramber'>What is Ramber?</a>

...will cause Ramber to run the page's preload function as soon as the user hovers over the link (on a desktop) or touches it (on mobile), rather than waiting for the click event to trigger navigation. Typically, this buys us an extra couple of hundred milliseconds, which is the difference between a user interface that feels laggy, and one that feels snappy.

rel=prefetch is a Ramber idiom, not a standard attribute for <a> elements

Building

Up until now we've been using ramber dev to build our application and run a development server. But when it comes to production, we want to create a self-contained optimized build.

ramber build

This command packages up your application into the __ramber__/build directory. (You can change this to a custom directory, as well as controlling various other options — do ramber build --help for more information.)

The output is a Node app that you can run from the project root:

node __ramber__/build

Exporting

Many sites are effectively static, which is to say they don't actually need an Express server backing them. Instead, they can be hosted and served as static files, which allows them to be deployed to more hosting environments (such as Netlify or GitHub Pages). Static sites are generally cheaper to operate and have better performance characteristics.

Ramber allows you to export a static site with a single zero-config ramber export command. In fact, you're looking at an exported site right now!

Static doesn't mean non-interactive — your Hamber components work exactly as they do normally, and you still get all the benefits of client-side routing and prefetching.

ramber export

Inside your Ramber project, try this:

# npx allows you to use locally-installed dependencies
npx ramber export

This will create a __ramber__/export folder with a production-ready build of your site. You can launch it like so:

npx serve __ramber__/export

Navigate to localhost:5000 (or whatever port serve picked), and verify that your site works as expected.

You can also add a script to your package.json...

{
	"scripts": {
		...
		"export": "ranber export"
	}
}

...allowing you to npm run export your app.

How it works

When you run ranber export, Ramber first builds a production version of your app, as though you had run ranber build, and copies the contents of your assets folder to the destination. It then starts the server, and navigates to the root of your app. From there, it follows any <a> elements it finds, and captures any data served by the app.

Because of this, any pages you want to be included in the exported site must be reachable by <a> elements. Additionally, any non-page routes should be requested in preload, not in onMount or elsewhere.

When not to export

The basic rule is this: for an app to be exportable, any two users hitting the same page of your app must get the same content from the server. In other words, any app that involves user sessions or authentication is not a candidate for ranber export.

Note that you can still export apps with dynamic routes, like our src/routes/blog/[slug].hamber example from earlier. ranber export will intercept fetch requests made inside preload, so the data served from src/routes/blog/[slug].json.js will also be captured.

Route conflicts

Because ranber export writes to the filesystem, it isn't possible to have two server routes that would cause a directory and a file to have the same name. For example, src/routes/foo/index.js and src/routes/foo/bar.js would try to create export/foo and export/foo/bar, which is impossible.

The solution is to rename one of the routes to avoid conflict — for example, src/routes/foo-bar.js. (Note that you would also need to update any code that fetches data from /foo/bar to reference /foo-bar instead.)

For pages, we skirt around this problem by writing export/foo/index.html instead of export/foo.

Deployment

Ramber apps run anywhere that supports Node 8 or higher.

Deploying to Now

This section relates to Now 1, not Now 2

We can very easily deploy our apps to Now:

npm install -g now
now

This will upload the source code to Now, whereupon it will do npm run build and npm start and give you a URL for the deployed app.

For other hosting environments, you may need to do npm run build yourself.

Deploying service workers

Ramber makes the Service Worker file (service-worker.js) unique by including a timestamp in the source code (calculated using Date.now()).

In environments where the app is deployed to multiple servers (such as Now), it is advisable to use a consistent timestamp for all deployments. Otherwise, users may run into issues where the Service Worker updates unexpectedly because the app hits server 1, then server 2, and they have slightly different timestamps.

To override Ramber's timestamp, you can use an environment variable (e.g. RAMBER_TIMESTAMP) and then modify the service-worker.js:

const timestamp = process.env.RAMBER_TIMESTAMP; // instead of `import { timestamp }`

const ASSETS = `cache${timestamp}`;

export default {
	/* ... */
	plugins: [
		/* ... */
		replace({
			/* ... */
			'process.env.RAMBER_TIMESTAMP': process.env.RAMBER_TIMESTAMP || Date.now()
		})
	]
}

Then you can set it using the environment variable, e.g.:

RAMBER_TIMESTAMP=$(date +%s%3N) npm run build

When deploying to Now, you can pass the environment variable into Now itself:

now -e RAMBER_TIMESTAMP=$(date +%s%3N)

Security

By default, Ramber does not add security headers to your app, but you may add them yourself using middleware such as Helmet.

Content Security Policy (CSP)

Ramber generates inline <script>s, which can fail to execute if Content Security Policy (CSP) headers disallow arbitrary script execution (unsafe-inline).

To work around this, Ramber can inject a nonce which can be configured with middleware to emit the proper CSP headers. Here is an example using Express and Helmet:

// server.js
import uuidv4 from 'uuid/v4';
import helmet from 'helmet';

app.use((req, res, next) => {
	res.locals.nonce = uuidv4();
	next();
});
app.use(helmet({
	contentSecurityPolicy: {
		directives: {
			scriptSrc: [
				"'self'",
				(req, res) => `'nonce-${res.locals.nonce}'`
			]
		}
	}
}));
app.use(ramber.middleware());

Using res.locals.nonce in this way follows the convention set by Helmet's CSP docs.

Base URLs

Ordinarily, the root of your Ramber app is served at /. But in some cases, your app may need to be served from a different base path — for example, if Ramber only controls part of your domain, or if you have multiple Ramber apps living side-by-side.

This can be done like so:

// app/server.js

express() // or Polka, or a similar framework
	.use(
		'/my-base-path', // <!-- add this line
		compression({ threshold: 0 }),
		serve('assets'),
		ramber.middleware()
	)
	.listen(process.env.PORT);

Ramber will detect the base path and configure both the server-side and client-side routers accordingly.

If you're exporting your app, you will need to tell the exporter where to begin crawling:

ramber export --basepath my-base-path

Debugging

Debugging your server code is particularly easy with ndb. Install it globally...

npm install -g ndb

...then run Ramber:

ndb npm run dev

This assumes that npm run dev runs ramber dev. You can also run Ramber via npx, as in ndb npx ramber dev.

Note that you may not see any terminal output for a few seconds while ndb starts up.