vanilla-go-webserver

README

vanilla-go-webserver

By José Martínez Santana

Technologies used

Description

A web server build with the standard library. Created for personal or small project Restful API development.

Features

• Crete, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) methods to interact with a database.
• Lightweight and efficient web server implementation using Go's standard library.
• Supports serving static files for sharing static content like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.
• Supports the routing with regular expressions validation.
• Supports to load simple .env file without external libraries.
• Supports template rendering for HTML and cache for faster performance and configuration for development or production.

Usage

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/MetalbolicX/vanilla-go-webserver.git

1. Install Go if you haven't already: https://golang.org/doc/install
2. Navigate to the project directory:

cd your-project-directory

1. Change the variables of the .env file in order to make the database connection.
2. Build the server:

go build

1. Start the server with the .exe file created by the go build command.
2. Access the server in your browser: http://localhost:3000 or change the port in the .env file.

Directory structure

The folders structures of the project are described in the following image:

├── data
│   ├── external
│   │   └── exercises.db
├── go.mod
├── go.sum
├── internal
│   ├── config
│   │   └── config.go
│   ├── db
│   │   └── relational-database.go
│   ├── handlers
│   │   └── customers.go
│   ├── middlewares
│   │   ├── checkauthentication.go
│   │   └── logging.go
│   ├── models
│   ├── pages
│   │   └── home.go
│   └── routes
│       └── binder.go
├── main.go
├── pkg
│   ├── render
│   │   └── render.go
│   ├── repository
│   │   └── repository.go
│   ├── server
│   │   ├── router.go
│   │   └── server.go
│   ├── types
│   │   ├── middleware.go
│   │   └── templatedata.go
│   └── utils
│       ├── endpoint-identifier.go
│       ├── envfile-loader.go
│       └── getrootpath.go
├── static
│   ├── css
│   │   └── styles.css
│   └── js
│       └── test.js
└── templates
    ├── about-page.html
    ├── base-layout.html
    └── home-page.html

To implement the logic of your project go to the internal folder. Each folder has the next purposes:

Folder 📁	Purpose
db	Methods to interact with the database.
handlers	Handler functions which the server will process each request.
middlewares	Store the middlewares of the handlers.
models	struct for the data model.
pages	Handler functions to server the web pages from the templates folder.
routes	In the binder.go file add the endpoints for the server to process each request.

Let's see an example to customize your project.

Change the database

The current database is a SQLite3, now it is necessary to scale to a PostgresSQL database.

1. In the file relational-database.go of the internal/db folder, change the following lines:

package db

import (
	"context"
	"database/sql"
	"log"
	"time"

  // Erase this line
	// _ "github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3"
)

type relationalDBRepo struct {
	db *sql.DB
}

1. In .env file change:

Before	After
DB_MANAGEMENT_SYSTEM=sqlite3	DB_MANAGEMENT_SYSTEM=postgres
DB_URL=./data/external/exercises.db	DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:54321/postgres?sslmode=disable (Check the documentation for the correct implementation of the connection string.)

NOTE: If somebody wants to add a NoSQL database create another file (Ex. mongodb.go) in the internal/db folder and add the logic to interact with the database.

Handlers addition

1. In the handlers folder add file called home.go and add the next code:

package handlers

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"net/http"
)

type homeResponse struct {
	Message string `json:"message"`
	Status  bool   `json:"status"`
}

func HomeHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
	w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
	json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(homeResponse{
		Message: "Welcome to my first web app with Go!!",
		Status:  true,
	})
}

1. Add the the new handler route to the server in the binder.go file of the internal/routes folder in the BindRoutes function.

func BindRoutes(s *server.Server) {
	s.Handle(http.MethodGet, "/home", handlers.HomeHandler)
}

Middleware addition

1. In the middlewares folder add a new file.
2. In the new file add the logic of the code. For example:

package middlewares

import (
	"github.com/MetalbolicX/vanilla-go-webserver/types"
)

func Example() types.Middleware {
	return func(handlerLogic http.HandlerFunc) http.HandlerFunc {
		return func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
			// Add the logic ...
	}
}

1. Add the new middleware in the binder.go file of the internal/routes folder in the BindRoutes function. For example:

func BindRoutes(s *server.Server) {
	s.Handle(http.MethodDelete, "/customer/\\d+",
		s.AddMiddleware(handlers.DeleteCustomerHandler,
			middlewares.CheckAuth(),
			middlewares.Logging(),
			middlewares.Example()))
}

Addition of web templates to serve them

1. Add the web template in the templates folder with next configuration of the name <name>-page.html. For example, about-page.html.
2. In the pages folder, add a new file called about.go and add the code. For example:

package pages

import (
	"net/http"

	"github.com/MetalbolicX/vanilla-go-webserver/pkg/render"
	"github.com/MetalbolicX/vanilla-go-webserver/pkg/types"
)

func AboutHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	// You can add custom data to render the template
	stringMap := make(map[string]string)
	stringMap["test"] = "Hello, again!!"
	// Add the name of the template and custom data in case is needed
	render.RenderTemplate(w, "about-page.html", &types.TemplateData{
		StringMap: stringMap,
	})
}

1. Add the the new page handler route to the server in the binder.go file of the internal/routes folder in the BindRoutes function.

func BindRoutes(s *server.Server) {
	s.Handle(http.MethodGet, "/about", pages.AboutHandler)
}

Configuration for development or production

In the main.go file change to true the use of the Go templates cache for production purposes. For development leave it in false in the next line of code:

app := config.NewAppConfig(tmplCache, false)

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change. I invite you to collaborate directly in this repository: vanilla-go-webserver

License

vanilla-go-webserver is released under the MIT License.