pfos/ncombo

Node.js Realtime App Framework

nCombo

nCombo is an Open Source Node.js framework that allows you to easily build powerful, rich cloud applications. nCombo is distributed under the MIT license. Please see license_mit.txt for details. Visit http://ncombo.com for more information.

To install, run:

npm install -g ncombo

Once installation is complete, to create a new app in the current directory run (replace myapp with your app's name):

ncombo create myapp

To create a 'ncombo-samples/' directory containing sample apps use:

ncombo samples

nCombo offers several ground-breaking features:

• It's efficient with server resources
• It dramatically reduces development time
• It lets you program in a single language (JavaScript)
• Full duplex client-server communication (thanks to socket.io)
• Allows you to call server-side functions from your client-side scripts
• Offers a simple webservice module which allows you to seamlessly interact with other nCombo applications
• Allows your client-side scripts to listen to server-side events. (You can also listen to events which occur on remote nCombo servers - If they allow you of course)
• Makes efficient use of caching (in release mode) - Restarting an nCombo server causes browsers to refresh their cache - So clients stay up to date
• A Session object which uniquely identifies each client is appended to all requests - The session object can be manipulated to store data unique to each client
• Session state is maintained accross all open tabs within a browser
• A Global object can be used to store data that can be shared between all clients - It also gives you access to all connected clients and lets you selectively exchange data between them
• Comes with all the standard middleware for session management, routing and the like - nCombo lets you add custom middleware to do tasks such as user authorization (such as controlling who has access to a file or server interface or who can listen to specific server events)
• Makes use of all available CPU cores for maximum efficiency and concurrency (or you can optionally specify the number of workers to use)
• Comes with default upload middleware and offers Valumn's uploader client-side - Creating an upload feature only takes a few lines of code