mithril-isomorphic-example

This is an example of an express-based isomorphic mithril application.

It utilizes the architecture descibed in this post. It can be used as a starting point for your isomorphic mithril-based application.

usage

1. Clone the repo
2. cd into it
3. run npm install
4. run npm start

If you want to run it in production mode (JS minification) just run NODE_ENV=production node server

components

frontend

It's a pretty standard mithril application. For packaging and dependencies we use browserify. The routes are defined in the routes.js. We added two routes for demonstration.

async data for rendering

Rendering async data is demonstrated in the second page. As you can see the route parameters come as vnode.attrs just like in browser mithril app. In order to render async you have to return a promise in the oninit. If this is resolved for all oninits, the response will be sent to the client.

function oninit(vnode) {
  return m.request(apiUrl + 'dog/' + 123).then(function(dog) {
    vnode.state.myDog = dog
  })
}

You can also use route resolver for this. We will add a third route that demonstrates this any time soon.

backend

REST-API

The app contains a basic REST-API based on express.

The API is bound to the base route api/v1/. This can of cause be changed in the server/web.js (also change it on the client side). It's currently just one possible route ('/dog/:id'). In a real application you probably make a config variable with your API-base URL so you can change it in one point.

conclusion

This project should give you a basic idea how to build a isomorphic app with express and mithril. We try to extract as much as possible to modules but stopped at this point, since more abstraction would result in more complicated code. This project is there to be adapted to your special use case. The code-base is pretty small and hopefully understandable.

Fell free to drop us a line in the gitter chat if you have any questions.