Application Startup

The server.js/client.js files at your application root are responsible for starting your application.

When you run the application with npm start the Nullstack.start method in both files will start your main component and return the context object of their respectives environments.

The returned context could be used normally, and you can set it's start method which runs only once, being a good place for setting things up, as your database:

import Nullstack from 'nullstack';
import Application from './src/Application';
import startDatabase from './database';

const context = Nullstack.start(Application);

context.start = async function() {
  context.database = await startDatabase(context.secrets);
}

export default context;

💡 The context.start in server.js runs when the application is booted, and on client.js once the browser loads it

The context can be updated in any way as long as it be exported on both files, when building the app Nullstack turns it into a serverless function out-of-box.

Dependency startup pattern

A nice pattern to work with dependencies that require startup time configurations is to define a _start function in the dependency:

import Nullstack from 'nullstack';

class Dependency extends Nullstack {

  static async _start(context) {
    // start something with context
  }

}

export default Dependency;

And call it in the context.start passing the context:

import Nullstack from 'nullstack';
import Application from './src/Application';
import Dependency from './src/Dependency';

const context = Nullstack.start(Application);

context.start = async function() {
  await Dependency._start(context);
}

export default Application;

🔒 Server functions with the name starting with "_" do not generate an API endpoint to avoid malicious API calls.