How do I make AdonisJS 5 modular and hookable?

[simonjcarr]

I want to experiment with making a modular application out of AdonisJS 5. I want to provide the ability for third-party developers to write a module that does not require the core application code to be touched.

Many PHP applications have this feature, think WordPress, PrestaShop Drupal etc.

I think the main difference here is that AdonisJS is compiled for production, so modules would have to be added in a dev environment rather than real-time in a production environment like can be done in PHP.

Even so, it would be great to have a core application that supported hooks and modules that were self-contained with Controllers, views, migrations, models, and routes and which the main application could invoke based on hooks.

1. Does anyone know if there is an example of this already being done?
2. Can anyone provide any advice on how you might make AdonisJS modular? i.e. routes outside of start/routes.ts
3. Is it even possible to do any of this in AdonisJS or would I be better starting from scratch without a framework like AdonisJS?

[zmaglica]

I think that it is possible. I am from the PHP world too and I do understand what you need. You can use Service Providers with adonis IoC to load any third-party module. Currently, a colleague and I are building our APP using DDD where we separate controllers, routes, ... in different folders and it is working great.

My suggestion is to wait a bit more to allow maintainers to implement all features and after that, you can start with your experiment.

[zmaglica]

I had the same issue with views. When you run node ace build, build script deletes edge files that are outside of the default view folder. You have to place view files inside resource folder

Also, you can use route namespaces to avoid this: /App/Modules/admin/Controllers/AdminController

example:

Route.group(() => {
  Route.post('/', 'UsersController.store').as('users.store')
}).prefix('/users').namespace("App/User/Controllers/Http")

[simonjcarr]

@zmaglica That's a bit of bugger. You can build a module that includes everything except views? I wonder if @thetutlage could advise if there is a way around this.

If it's the only thing stopping a truly modular approach, perhaps it can be looked at as part of the "the people would like" for AdonisJS 5 features.

Thanks for the tip on namespacing.

[zmaglica]

@simonjcarr There is a workaround (the ugly one) for the problem with views where you can create a command inside module where you copy view fields to the default adonis resource folder

[thetutlage]

It is possible to register views from outside by defining custom disks. On this entire topic, I will rather wait and write proper docs, since it is not something I can explain a reply or two.

Also, once I will start with the documentation, I may find some rough edge, so I will work on them at that time

[simonjcarr]

Thank you