Alpas Updates — 29 Jan 2020 Edition

Alpas Updates — 29 Jan 2020 Edition

There is an internet meme on how to draw a nicely detailed horse in just 5 easy steps. Essentially, following 4 very simple and tangible steps and then, all of the sudden, draw an insanely detailed horse in step 5 without much guidance. Oftentimes, this same basic leap in fidelity also feels prevalent when building apps using many of the web frameworks that are available. Such, as:

Step 1 : Get your environment ready — download and install dependencies, IDE, etc.

Step 2 : “Hello World”

Step 3 : Add a little code here and a server, database, security, authentication, etc. there… And, tada! Now you have Google.

The path from step 2 to step 3 can be very daunting. Our goal with the Alpas framework is to sweat the details that get you to step 3 so you don’t have to. We want you to be happy doing what you love most, writing code.

Alpas is a batteries-included web framework for Kotlin with a very strong focus on developers’ productivity. We are currently working towards a 1.0 version and are striving to make your full journey of web development to be as painless, simple, and delightful as possible while still allowing the flexibility for you to bring in your preferred tools.

We are excited to go on this journey and for you to ride along with us!

Weekly Stats 📈

From 2020–01–22 thru 2020–01–28

We officially released the pre 1.0 version on the 21st of January 2020 and had better than expected viewership and positive reactions. Here are a few key stats.

• 733 unique sessions on alpas.dev with representation from 86 countries
• GitHub totals : ️👀 474; ⭐ 41
• 21 total Slack members

Achievements and Highlights🏅

• Trended on GitHub for Kotlin repos
• 3 articles trending on Dev.to #Kotlin for the month (see links to articles below) with over 850 views and 100+ reactions; 200+ views on same articles posted on Medium
• 3 how-to videos on AlplasCasts
• Made it to the front page of /r/webdev

Progress Towards v1.0 🏃🏻‍♀️

Check out the full to-do list for getting to version 1.0 on GitHub.

Completed

✅ Allow multiple static asset locations

✅ Reloading of static assets without re-compiling the code and re-starting the server

✅ Resolve MySQL 8.0 connection issue

Up next

• Refactor routing engine to support more strongly typed routes
• Refactor view render to make it easy to extend
• Allow easily adding of conditional tags and custom tags
• Allow easily adding of conditional tags and custom tags
• Improve the core to allow third-party extensions to easily extend Alpas
• Support hot reloading of templates
• Write an adapter for InertiaJS: https://inertiajs.com/
• Port InertiaJS’s official demo app, PingCRM, to Alpas: https://demo.inertiajs.com/login

Alpas and Kotlin Around the Web 🕸

Let’s build a web app from scratch to finish with Alpas and Kotlin

The first blog post by the brains behind Alpas talking about the lack of a good web framework available to Kotlin programmers, the need for one, and how he built one to “scratch his own itch.”

A web app from scratch to finish with Alpas and Kotlin — Up and Running

In this blog, we start the first in the series tutorial on how to create your very first Alpas app — based on the Fireplace demo app.

A web app from scratch to finish with Alpas and Kotlin — Authentication Scaffolding

Part two in the series tutorial, this article takes you through creating full-featured authentication scaffolding in just a few lines of codes and commands.

Using IntelliJ to speed up your dev workflow

Gaurav Singh highlights some of his favorite features of JetBrain’s IntelliJ IDEA that helps increase developer productivity. Helpful VIM plugins, how to easily search for what you are looking for, and drop frames while debugging are just a few of the time-saving features highlighted.

Kotlin Standard Functions cheat-sheet

New users usually get confused with the similarities betweenlet, with, run… and what they do. Even advanced users get confused with when to use them from time to time. Here’s a handy cheat sheet by Jose Alcerreca.

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