metarhia
Enterprise application server for Node.js: secure, lightweight, interactive, and scalable.
Description
First Node.js server scaled with multithreading and extra thin workload isolation. Optimized for high-intensive data exchange, rapid development, and clean architecture. Provides everything you need out of the box for reliable and efficient backend, network communication with web and mobile clients, protocol-agnostic API, run-time type validation, real-time and in-memory data processing, and reliable stateful services.
Weak sides: not a good choice for content publishing including blogs and online stores, server-side rendering, serving static content and stateless services.
Strong sides: security and architecture for enterprise-level applications, long-lived connections over websocket to minimize overhead for cryptographic handshake, no third-party dependencies.
Quick start
- See project template: metarhia/Example
- Start server with
node server.js - See documentation and specifications
API endpoint example: application/api/example.1/citiesByCountry.js
async ({ countryId }) => {
const fields = ['cityId', 'name'];
const where = { countryId };
const data = await db.select('City', fields, where);
return { result: 'success', data };
};You can call it from client-side:
const res = await metacom.api.example.citiesByCountry({ countryId: 3 });Metarhia and impress application server way
- Applied code needs to be simple and secure, so we use sandboxing with v8 isolated contexts, worker threads and javascript closures;
- Domain code should be separated from system code; so we use DDD, layered (onion) architecture, DI, SOLID and GRASP principles, contract-based approach;
- Impress supports stateful applications with RPC and client-session sticky to servers; microservices, centralized or distributed architecture;
- No I/O is faster even than async I/O, so we hold state in memory, share it among multiple threads and use lazy I/O for persistent storage;
- We use just internal trusted dependencies, no third-party npm packages; total Metarhia technology stack size is less than 2mb.
Features
- API auto-routing calls to
endpointfor rapid API development (no need to add routes manually) - API concurrency: request execution timeout and execution queue with both timeout and size limitations
- Schemas for API contract, data structures validation, and domain models
- Application server supports different API styles: RPC over AJAX and over Websocket, REST, and web hooks
- Multiple protocols support: HTTP, HTTPS, WS, WSS
- Auto loader with
starthooks, namespace generation for code and dependencies - Live reload of code through filesystem watch
- Graceful shutdown with
stophooks - Minimal dependencies and reduced code size
- Layered architecture: api, domain logic, data access layer, and system code layer (hidden)
- Code sandboxing for enhanced security and execution context isolation
- Code protection: reference pollution prevention, prototype pollution prevention
- Multi-threading for CPU utilization and execution isolation
- Load balancing for simple scaling with redirection to multiple ports
- Caching: in-memory caching for APIs and static files
- Configuration: environment-specific application settings
- Database access layer compatible with PostgreSQL with SQL-injection protection
- Persistent sessions with authentication, groups, and anonymous sessions
- Buffered logging (lazy write) with log rotation (keep logs N days) and console interface
- Testing: integrated node.js native test runner and table-test support
- Inter-process communication and shared memory used for state management
- File utilities: upload, download, support for partial content and streaming
- Task Management: scheduled task execution at specific intervals or certain times
TODO list
Those features will be implemented in nearest future (3-6 months):
- Server health monitoring
- Database migrations
- State synchronization mechanism with transactions and subscription
- Multi-tenancy support
Requirements
- Node.js v18.x or v20.x
- Linux (tested on Fedora v36-38, Ubuntu v18-23, CentOS v8-9)
- Postgresql v11-16
- OpenSSL v3 or later (optional, for https & wss)
- certbot (recommended but optional)
License & Contributors
Copyright (c) 2012-2025 Metarhia contributors. See github for full contributors list. Impress Application Server is MIT licensed. Project coordinator: <timur.shemsedinov@gmail.com>