Getting Started

First, let's install the universal-core CLI by installing it globally.

npm install -g @universal-packages/core

Let's create our first universal-core application using the universal-packages CLI. Make sure you have a version of Node equal to or greater than 18 installed on your machine.

ucore new my-app

ucore new my-app --typescript

This will install the universal-core global CLI and create a new project in the my-app directory. Now, let's navigate to the project directory and start the example app.

cd my-app

Now we can start the example app using the following command:

npm start

You will be able to see some logs in the console, and the app will be running. The console will also show some real-time statistics about the app.

Let's take a look at what we are running by checking the example app file.

import { CoreApp } from "@universal-packages/core";

export default class ExampleApp extends CoreApp {
  static appName = "example-app";
  static description = "This app exemplify how the life cycle of a core app goes";

  timeout = 0;

  async run() {
    this.timeout = setTimeout(() => {}, 999999999);
  }


  async stop() {
    clearTimeout(this.timeout);
  }
}

import { CoreApp } from "@universal-packages/core";

interface ExampleAppConfig {
  cores: number;
  ram: number;
}

interface ExampleAppArgs {
  p: number;
  port: number;
}

export default class ExampleApp extends CoreApp<ExampleAppConfig,ExampleAppArgs> {
  public static readonly appName = "example-app";
  public static readonly description = "This app exemplify how the life cycle of a core app goes";

  private timeout: NodeJS.Timeout;

  public async run(): Promise<void> {
    this.timeout = setTimeout((): void => {}, 999999999);
    core.logger.log({
      level: "INFO",
      title: "Example app has started",
      category: "APP",
      metadata: this.config,
    });
  }

  public async stop(): Promise<void> {
    clearTimeout(this.timeout);
  }
}

This is a simple example of a core app. It has a run method that will be called to start the app and a stop method that will be called when a stop request has been made. In the sample app, the run method will create a timeout that will never end, and the stop method will clear this timeout.

This tells us that apps are meant to be kept alive and running, and that there should be a way to stop them.

This is what makes universal-core so powerful. It allows you to create apps that can do anything while sharing the entire code base and modules. This way, you may have a web server that can access your configured DB and a web socket server that can access the same DB, classes, and configured resources, all within the same code base.