Architecture
Bindle
Bindle is the term for a versioned package that can contain multiple objects of different types, or aggregate object storage. Each item in a bindle is called a parcel.
Parcels can be any arbitrary data such as:
- WebAssembly modules
- Templates
- Web files such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images
- Machine learning models
- Any other files that your application relies upon
A bindle for a website could look like this:
my-web-app 1.2.3
|- index.html
|- style.css
|- library.js
|- pretty-picture.jpg
Bindles are more than just a zip file, they can also express groups and relationships between its parcels. By associating related parcels into groups, a client can make decisions about which parcels it needs to download, and only retrieve what it needs. A parcel can be associated with more than one group, which is useful for common components.
Take for example a fantasy football prediction application, with three groups defined:
- Frontend UI
- Backend that uses a machine learning model
- Backend that uses a statistical prediction model
The frontend group would contain HTML, images, and JavaScript files and is a required group. The frontend specifies that it requires a backend, which could be the “machine-learning” backend or the “statistical” backend. When the application is run, the frontend group and its parcels are downloaded, and depending on the client’s configuration, one of the backend groups and their parcels are downloaded as well. A client with plenty of time and resources might select the machine learning backend, while a constrained client might pick the faster statistical formulas.
Individual parcels in a bindle are content addressable and can be retrieved independently. Parcels can be cached by the client and reused across bindles. For example, if three bindles all contained jquery v3.6.0, then the parcel is downloaded when the first bindle is run, and it is retrieved from the cache when the other two bindles are run.
Bindle Server
Bindle CLI
Hippo Server
Hippo CLI
The hippo command-line tool is currently named hippofactory, which will probably change in the near future.
Wagi
Wagi is a lightweight server for executing WebAssembly modules as HTTP handlers.
Wagi provides a minimal framework for writing microservices and web apps in WebAssembly.
It provides a way to map request handlers to WebAssembly modules.
For example, it allows you to declare that all request to http://example.com/hello
will be sent to the hello.wasm module.
A module is passed a single request, and is expected to produce a response.
This is similar to CGI, WSGI, and other web service patterns.