Book Image

D Web Development

By : Kai Nacke
4 (1)
Book Image

D Web Development

4 (1)
By: Kai Nacke

Overview of this book

D is a programming language with C-like syntax and static typing. The vibe.d framework builds on powerful D concepts like template meta-programming and compile-time function execution to provide an easy-to-use environment for web applications. The combination of a feature-rich web programming framework with a language compiling to native code solves two common issues in web development today: it accelerates your development and it results in fast, native web applications. Learning the vibe.d framework before you start your application will help you to choose the right features to reach your goal. This book guides you through all aspects of web development with D and the vibe.d framework. Covering the popular operating systems today, this guide starts with the setup of your development system. From the first Hello World-style application you will move on to building static web pages with templates. The concise treatment of web forms will give you all the details about form handling and web security. Using the abstractions of the web framework you will learn how to easily validate user input. Next, you will add database access to your application, providing persistent storage for your data. Building on this foundation, you will expose your component and integrate other components via REST. Learning about the internals of vibe.d you will be able to use low-level techniques such as raw TCP access. The vibe.d concepts can also be used for GUI clients, which is the next topic that you will learn. vibe.d is supported by an active community, which adds new functionality. This comprehensive guide concludes with an overview of the most useful vibe.d extensions and where to find them. It also shows you how to integrate these extensions in your application. The concepts are always illustrated with source code, giving you an insight into how to apply them in your application.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
10
Index

Taking advantage of unique D features


In the previous chapters, each application initialized routes and associated them with the handler functions or delegates. There are two shortcomings: you have to type a lot, and there is a certain distance between the places where the route is initialized and the handler is defined.

For sure, we can do better. Let's assume that the handler functions are all methods of an object:

class WebApp
{
  void getIndex(HTTPServerRequest req, HTTPServerResponse res)
  { /* ... */ }
  
  void postNote(HTTPServerRequest req, HTTPServerResponse res)
  { /* ... */ }
}

Then, you can perform the following functions:

  • The route and HTTP method can be derived from the method name

  • User-defined attributes can be used to associate a route with a method, set up an error handler, require authentication, and so on

This is possible with D at compile time! With compile-time reflection, you can enumerate all the methods of an object. Then, you can derive a route from the method name...