A node.js SDK for Haxe

A collection of externs and tools to quickly get started with Haxe/Node.js

Warning : This is a work in progress and is definitely not stable nor complete !

Features

Type signatures

The library contains type signatures for :

• The base node.js API
• Common NPM libraries such as :
  • Connect.js middleware framework for node
  • Express.js web application framework for node
  • and more to come ;)

We try to keep the externs as close as possible to their native APIs, while sticking as much as possible to the Haxe type / package system.

This means :

• Splitting the APIs in modules so the structure is as close as possible to the native API docs. This should also allow most code examples to look as similar as possible in JS and in Haxe.
• Using extern classes rather than typedefs when possible (typedefs should be used only for simple JS key/value objects such as option objects)
• Using packages rather than static variables when possible (new js.npm.connect.CookieParser() rather than js.npm.Connect.cookieParser())
• Assuming that in most cases, instantiation using simple JS calls (like var app = express()) is similar to using new in Haxe (like var app = new Express())

NPM integration

The library provides an easy way to manage NPM dependecies.

Including NPM packages

You can map your extern classes to an NPM package by implementing npm.Package.Require or npm.Package.RequireNamespace.

For example :

// js/npm/MyPackage.hx
package js.npm;
extern class MyPackage
implements npm.Package.Require<"my-package","*">

// Test.hx
var test = new js.npm.MyPackage();

// resulting Javascript output:
var js_npm_MyPackage = require('my-package');
var test = new js_npm_MyPackage();

Sometimes, a single require exports several objects that can be considered individual classes in Haxe.

In such cases you can use RequireNamespace:

// js/node/http/Server.hx
package js.node.http;
extern class Server
implements npm.Package.RequireNamespace<"http","*">

// resulting Javascript output:
var js_node_http_Server = require('http').Server;

Exporting your projects' dependencies

All NPM packages included this way can be exported by the Haxe compiler, typically to a package.json file, so they can be automatically installed using npm install

You just add to add this flag to your build.hxml script :

--macro npm.Package.export("package.json")

Note that the macro will parse the package file, add dependencies to it, and then rewrite the whole json file.

This means that it will remove any comments, and may change formatting.

The process is incremental, though, which means that :

• other dependencies you may have added manually will be kept.
• unused dependencies will remain unless you remove them manually

Please also note that the dependency system currently doesn't manage package versions / SemVer.

Todo

• Continue integrating / cleaning / completing externs, mainly from nodejs_externs
• More libraries (Mongoose, ...)
• Complete the node API
• Improve NPM integration (SemVer, less intrusive dependency export)
• Try to fix issues with compiler cache...
• Publish to haxelib