Learn full-stack web development using fastn in a week

Features

Frontend

Building Frontend With `fastn`

fastn is a versatile and user-friendly solution for all your frontend development requirements. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting, here's why you should consider fastn:

Easy Content Authoring

With fastn, you can express your ideas and bring them to a compilation with ease. Its user-friendly interface and minimal syntax allow even those with no prior programming experience to grasp its functionalities swiftly.

Take a look at this simple example:

Input

-- ftd.text: Hello World!

Lang:

ftd

Output

Hello World!

fastn is a DSL (Domain Specific Language) for authoring long for text, and have access to rich collection of readymade components.

Here is an example:

Input

-- amitu: Hello World! 😀

-- amitu:

Writing single or multiline text is easy in fastn!

No quotes required.

Lang:

ftd

Output

Hello World! 😀

Writing single or multiline text is easy in fastn!

No quotes required.

These are not built-in components of fastn, but are using open source component libraries built with fastn. Click here to view the chat component.

Example of a little more complex component:

Input

-- import: fastn-community.github.io/bling/quote

-- quote.rustic: Nandhini, Content Writer

With fastn, I have complete control from my writing desk to the live webpage.

Lang:

ftd

Output

With fastn, I have complete control from my writing desk to the live webpage.

Nandhini, Content Writer

Click here to view the quote component.

Check out our rich library of readymade components including doc sites, landing pages, blog pages, resumes, and more.

Unified Language

The language used to author content and build components in fastn is the same. This means you can start by using readymade components and gradually transition to creating your own, making the learning process smoother. fastn comes with basic building blocks like text, images and containers using which other UI can be constructed.

Markdown Support

fastn excels in content authoring, making it an ideal choice for content-driven websites. Unlike other frameworks like React, which might require using separate languages like MDX for content, fastn allows you to use a simplified markdown-like language, making content creation straightforward.

Take the below example for instance:

Input

-- import: fastn-community.github.io/doc-site as ds
-- ds.markdown:

Lorem `ipsum dolor` sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt

**Bold Text** dolor sit amet, *Italic text* elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt.

Lorem ipsum [fastn](https://fastn.com/) amet, consectetur adipiscing
elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.

Bullet list:

- List item 1
- List item 2
- List item 3
- Sub List item 1
- Sub List item 2
- Sub List item 3

Ordered list:

1. List item
2. List item
3. List item
1. Sub List Item
2. Sub List Item
3. Sub List Item

~The world is flat.~

Lang:

ftd

Output

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt

Bold Text dolor sit amet, Italic text elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.

Lorem ipsum fastn amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.

Bullet list:

List item 1
List item 2
List item 3
- Sub List item 1
- Sub List item 2
- Sub List item 3

Ordered list:

List item
List item
List item
1. Sub List Item
2. Sub List Item
3. Sub List Item

~~The world is flat.~~

Semantic Content

With fastn, your content becomes more semantic. Instead of just headings and paragraphs, you work with named components that have rich types. This ensures better structure and maintainability of your content.

For example, if you want to talk about your team, in markdown you will say:

# Team

## Jack Smith

Jack is our lead designer. He joined us on 20th Feb 2022. He loves to cook and
swim, and is often found walking his husky.

![Jack Smith's Mugshot](/images/team/jack.jpg)

Lang:

Whereas in fastn you say:

-- lib.team:

-- lib.member: Jack Smith
joined-on: 20th Feb 2022
title: Lead Designer
mugshot: $assets.files.team.jack.jpg

Jack loves to cook and swim, and is often found walking his husky.

-- end: lib.team

Lang:

ftd

The information content is captured in fields. The fields have types, so there is no invalid data. There is a separation of markup from content, as in this case of markdown the image will always come after the paragraph, but in the case of fastn, the image can be placed anywhere, decided by the lib.member component.

Integrated Design System

fastn comes with integrated design system. Instead of specifying font sizes or colors, you specify typography and color roles to UI elements. The roles are well defined, so within the fastn ecosystem they are well known, and a lot of color scheme and typography packages available, which you can install and change the entire typography or color scheme in a few lines of code.

Learn more about fastn design system.

More Powerful than Markdown, Simpler than HTML

With just a few lines of code, you can create a visually appealing and impactful document. It is a language that is easy to read and understand. It is not verbose like HTML, and not simplistic like Markdown.

fastn can be compared with Markdown, but with fastn, you can define variables, perform event handling, abstract out logic into custom components etc.

Declare Variables

In fastn, you can create variables with specific types. fastn is a strongly-typed language, so the type of each variable must be declared.

Here's an example of how you can define a boolean type variable:

Defining Variable

-- boolean flag: true

Lang:

ftd

In this code, we're creating a variable named flag of boolean type. The variable is defined as immutable, meaning its value cannot be altered. If you want to define a mutable variable, simply add a $ symbol before the variable name.

Consider this example which has a mutable variable declaration flag.

Defining Variable

-- boolean $flag: true

Lang:

ftd

Perform Event handling

fastn makes it easy to add events to your element.

fastn includes many default functions that are commonly used, like the toggle function which can be used to create simple event handling.

You can also create your own function or use built-in function.

Here's an example of a built-in function:

Input

-- boolean $show: true

-- ftd.text: Enter mouse cursor over me
$on-mouse-enter$: $ftd.set-bool($a = $show, v = true)
$on-mouse-leave$: $ftd.set-bool($a = $show, v = false)

-- ftd.text: Hide and Seek
if: { show }

Lang:

ftd

Output

Enter mouse cursor over me

Create Custom Components

In fastn, you can create custom components to abstract out logic and improve code organization. For example:

ftd.text kernel component

-- toggle-text: fastn is cool!


-- component toggle-text:
boolean $current: false
caption title:

-- ftd.text: $toggle-text.title
align-self: center
color if { toggle-text.current }: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.disabled
color: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.text
role: $inherited.types.heading-tiny
background.solid: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.base
padding.px: 20
border-radius.px: 5
$on-click$: $ftd.toggle($a = $toggle-text.current)

-- end: toggle-text

Lang:

ftd

Output

fastn is cool!

Here we have created a new component called toggle-text, and then instantiated it instead. This way you can create custom component library and use them in your writing without "polluting" the prose with noise.

Import

fastn allows you to separate component and variable definitions into different modules, and then use them in any module by using the import keyword. This helps to logically organize your code and avoid complexity, leading to cleaner and easier to understand code.

Consider the below example:

fastn Hello World!

-- import: lib

-- lib.h1: Hello World

Lang:

ftd

The code above shows a fastn document that imports a library named "lib" and has a level 1 heading of "Hello World".

Data Driven

The data in the fastn files can be trivially extracted, converted to JSON, whereas in case of markdown you have to write fragile parser to extract the data locked in markdown text blobs.

Rust Code To Extract Data

#[derive(serde::Deserialize)]
struct Member {
name: String,
#[rename("joined-on")]
joined_on: String,
title: Option<String>,
mugshot: Option<String>,
bio: String,
}

let doc = fastn::Document::from("some/id", source)?;
let members: Vec<Member> = doc.invocations("lib.member")?;

Lang:

Soon we will support json conversion on fastn CLI as well, fastn json-dump team.ftd --invocations=lib.member will return:

json returned by fastn json-dump

[
{
"name": "Jack Smith",
"joined-on": "20th Feb 2022",
"title": "Lead Designer",
"mugshot": "/team/jack.jpg",
"bio": "Jack loves to cook and swim, and is often found walking his husky."
}
]

Lang:

json

Data Modelling

fastn language is also a good first class data language. You can define and use records:

Data Modelling in fastn

-- record person:
caption name:
string location:
optional body bio:

Lang:

ftd

Each field has a type. caption is an alias for string, and tells fastn that the value can come in the "caption" position, after the : of the "section line", eg: lines that start with --. If a field is optional, it must be marked as such.

Creating a variable

-- person amitu: Amit Upadhyay
location: Bangalore, India

Amit is the founder and CEO of FifthTry.

He loves to code, and is pursuing his childhood goal of
becoming a professional starer of the trees.

Lang:

ftd

Here we have defined a variable amitu. You can also define a list:

Creating a list

-- person list employees:

-- person: Sourabh Garg
location: Ranchi, India

-- person: Arpita Jaiswal
location: Lucknow, India

Arpita is the primary author of `fastn` language.

-- end: employees

Lang:

ftd

fastn provides a way to create a component that can render records and loop through lists to display all members of the list:

Looping over a list

-- render-person:
person: $p
$loop$: $employees as $p

Lang:

ftd

This way we can have clean separation of data from presentation. The data defined in fastn documents can be easily read from say Rust:

Reading Data from .ftd files

#[derive(serde::Deserialize)]
struct Employee {
name: String,
location: String,
bio: Option<String>
}

let doc = ftd::p2::Document::from("some/id", source, lib)?;
let amitu: Employee = doc.get("amitu")?;
let employees: Vec<Employee> = doc.get("employees")?;

Lang:

As mentioned earlier, fastn language is a first-class data language that provides a better alternative to sharing data through CSV or JSON files. Unlike CSV/JSON, in fastn, data is type-checked, and it offers a proper presentation of the data with the option to define components that can render the data and can be viewed in a browser. Furthermore, fastn language can also serve as a language for configuration purposes.

Get Started with fastn: We provide a step-by-step guide to help you build your first fastn-powered website. You can also install fastn and learn to build UI Components using fastn.
Docs: Our docs is the go-to resource for mastering fastn. It provides valuable resources from in-depth explanations to best practices.
Backend: fastn also supports a bunch of backend features that helps you create dynamic websites.
Web Designing: Check out our design features to see how we can enhance your web design.