Ask HN: I want to create a web framework
I want to create a web framework on top of node.js.
Where should I start? What should I read? Who should I follow? What should I learn?
Where should I start? What should I read? Who should I follow? What should I learn?
To write a framework, you need to know what problems you need to solve. You get that from trying to write websites, not from trying to write frameworks. I strongly recommend against trying to cargo-cult a framework ("well, they have ORMs and MVC and dadadada, so I'll write an ORM and do MVC and dadadada because that's how it's done"), because you may get the letter right but you'll be missing the spirit. (Not that some very successful frameworks haven't suffered from exactly that.... no, I'm not talking about any of the really big hitters, but some of the mid-tier ones have this problem.)
If I where to build a framework now, it would be a framework build on one of the JavaScript toolkits (at least pluggable so any of them could be integrated, If I had to chose one it would be Dojo or jQuery depending on what I was targeting), a REST library, a content based router and a security API. I would also consider bolting on a CMS that templated HTML and exported it to pure HTML on a web server. This is where the future of the web is heading to build another ASP.NET or PHP or Struts on Node.js will give your product a limited lifespan.
http://www.google.com/search?q=node.js+web+framework&ie=...
The search turns up an interesting blog: http://fleegix.org/articles/2010-03-15-geddy-web-framework-f...
...and the blog has a link to a list of exiting web frameworks (also the fourth hit in the google search): http://github.com/ry/node/wiki/modules
Learn from what others have done and build on it.