

Subject: [ANN] Halcyon 0.5.0 Released!

From: "Matt Todd" <chiology@ a . m

Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:16:34 +0900

Halcyon version 0.5.0 has been released! == DESCRIPTION Halcyon is a framework for developing service-oriented applications. == ANNOUNCEMENT Halcyon has gone through a major refactoring: the codebase has been completely restructured and developed from scratch. Halcyon apps behave much more like applications and the framework has separated itself completely from the server domain. == EVOLUTION The 0.4.0 branch had numerous design and implementation deficiencies, mainly due to a lack of experience and understanding on my part. Putting applications into production has revealed numerous flaws and prompted a complete rewrite, which is where Halcyon 0.5.0 has come from. Not only are Halcyon applications more app-like than previously, Halcyon itself has matured and separated itself from any type of server-specific functionality which Rack's handlers and the servers themselves are far more capable of handling. In addition to these changes, applications look more app-like with a proper implementation of an MVC pattern (though the view is still just JSON responses and the models are not explicitly factored in by default). I'm really proud to announce this iteration of Halcyon and can only see great improvement hereon! == CHANGES * major refactor, completely incompatible with 0.4.0 applications * new application-centric structure and design [#13 resolved] * remove coupled server code, completely Rack-based * full Rack handler support (Thin/Mongrel/etc), daemonization [#12 resolved] * application structure split into controllers [#17 resolved] * application initialize improved greatly, structured * new configurable attributes with config hooks [#31 resolved] * configurable paths [#33 resolved] * new commandline interface for application tasks * new application generation from commandline * able to run application interactively in IRB shell [#18 resolved] * logging configuration improved, more loggers supported [#4 resolved] * added JavaScript, PHP, and Java clients [#27 resolved] * enhanced debugging output [#15 resolved] * fixed changed merb/core_ext dependencies [#16 resolved] * DateTime et al return ISO 8601 format for to_json [#19 resolved/deferred] * much improved documentation, API and otherwise [#7 resolved] * generated applications include better inline documentation [#21 resolved] * improved specs with more thorough testing [#2 resolved] * new examples [#23 resolved] * app init can specify to initialize new Git repo for new app [#25 resolved] * fixed bug with interactive shell not loading the correct paths [#39 resolved] * extended status codes to provide more extensive errors/states == SYNOPSIS A great example of an SOA is the Twitter API service, accessed via sending requests to URLs and parsing the data returned. Halcyon utilizes the widely used HTTP protocol and JSON format for handling requests and responses, making its overall footprint light and sending complex data trivial. Halcyon is built on top of Rack which means it can be folded into existing Rack application stacks, can be run on any kind of server supported (including Thin, Mongrel, etc), and provides a great deal of flexibility for injecting functionality. Several example applications exist within the repository. Check them out at http://github.com/mtodd/halcyon/tree/master/examples/. == INSTALLATION Halcyon can be installed with RubyGems with: $ sudo gem install halcyon The latest development gem can be downloaded from with: $ sudo gem install halcyon --source=http://halcyon.rubyforge.org/latest/ If you're feeling adventurous, you can also clone the repository and install directly from the Rake task: $ git clone git://github.com/mtodd/halcyon.git $ cd halcyon; rake install NOTE: Because of platform limitations with dependencies, Halcyon by default only ensures that the JSON pure-Ruby variant is installed. To install the faster C-based extension, try: $ sudo gem install json == DOCUMENTATION Halcyon has been under a complete overhaul of its documentation (and is still being worked on). New articles have been written for getting started, writing controllers, defining routes, etc, and even more advanced topics have been touched on (or are planned), such as integrating databases into the development of your application as well as taking full advantage of the Rack features. Check out the documentation at http://halcyon.rubyforge.org/docs/ == LICENSE Halcyon is licensed under the MIT License.