xu60 0.1.1

an ideal backend

xu60

an ideal backend

xu60 is a

• Content-Addressable
• Hyper Text Transport Protocol
• Application Programmatic Interface

where hashes and character indexes

define immutable URLs

for re-usable content, (mostly) guaranteed not to rot as a website grows, changes, is edited, or is otherwised enhanced (or regressed)

scope

1. xu60 should provide an HTTP server that is simultaneously capable of serving traditional web pages, scripts, and styles alongside whatever content-addressable data an application developer sees fit
2. xu60 should contain additional functionality for querying document version histories and displaying document metadata such as original paths, edit dates, etc.
3. besides documents, content-addressable document histories, and document/history metadata, xu60 should remain agnostic to use-case and ship as few features as is plausible
4. xu60 should virtually never re-code the core algorithms that make its features possible. high-performance versions of virtually every element already exist--xu60 is a thin application layer built around known technologies. plus I'm dumb
5. the "known technologies" that xu60 relies on should (wherever possible) already be infrastructurally important to the web and unlikely to disappear or be deprecated with any rapidity
6. xu60 should be easy to run in a number of configurations to serve a number of applications--hypermedia-ing, mirroring, addressing, serving, distributing, archiving, auditing, etc.

demo and installation

xu60 comes with a demo application (built with htmx!! [under construction]) that serves as both a technical demonstration of the server's capabilities, proof-of-concept object browser, and tour of the server's own code.

# to run xu60 in its current state:
git clone https://github.com/rfinz/xu60.git #clone the repository
cd xu60 #navigate into the project
python -m venv env #create a virtual environment
source env/bin/activate #activate the virtual environment
pip install -e . #install required dependencies and the xu60 application
uvicorn xu60:app #run the asgi application -- you may need to install uvicorn separately
# -> the demo should now be available at 127.0.0.1:8000

to do

• finish demo web app
• package python application for distribution
• re-write README to reflect the installation differences between a git based development install and using the package as a requirement for your own application
• think of more to do