writeonce/docs/examples/porch/README.md

porch — the writeonce web framework

Named porch on 2026-08-26. Rename history: writeonce-framework (use framework) → writeonce-serve (use serve, 2026-08-25) → porch (use porch). Stories, specs, plans and the audit reports dated before each change still say the older name — they are dated records and were left as written, which is the repo's convention.

Why porch: the structure in front of the house you actually enter through, and in writeonce the house is the database. The name appears only in use lines and the [deps] key — names resolve bare through use edges, so no handler body mentions it.

A web framework written in writeonce, consumed as a [deps] dependency (iteration 15). Roadmap: docs/stories/porch/ — its own track, eight iterations, numbered from 1, derived from the Fiber parity study. Spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-18-web-framework-design.md §B.

[deps]
porch     = { git = "https://github.com/shoneyj/porch", rev = "v0.1.0" }

What it is

• HTTP/1.1 server core: request parsing (Content-Length bodies, %-decoded paths and query strings), response serialization, a blocking serve loop that answers 400 to malformed requests, 500 to trapping handlers (and survives), closes every fd, and honors SIGTERM. Connection policy: pipelined requests are served on one connection; idle connections close after the response — on a single-threaded server a parked keep-alive connection would block accept and starve every other client, so closing is the correct shape until fiber-per-connection serving lands (the arc — 8/11 — landed 2026-08-21; the serve-loop slice that consumes it is iteration 24's). A proxy in front simply reconnects.
• Router (router/): method + path table with :param captures into req.params; first match wins; a known path with the wrong method is 405 with the Allow header (registration order); no matching path is the framework's 404. HEAD is served free: routed as GET, body suppressed, Content-Length still names the body a GET would carry.
• Registration helpers: app.get/post/put/delete_(pattern, handler) push the route for you (delete_ because delete is the query keyword); app.add(Route { ... }) stays for anything else. A request-line Logging middleware ships in router/, and set_header(resp, name, value) is the escape hatch for headers the builders don't set.
• Handlers without closures: the language has no function values by doctrine, so a route handler is a class satisfying the Handler interface (fn handle(req: Req) -> Resp), dispatched structurally — a non-conforming handler is a compile error (WO-E205). Middleware is its own interface (fn before(req: Req) -> ?Resp; nil = continue, a Resp short-circuits).
• Auth mechanism in core (http/auth.wo): Authorization header parsing (scheme split, case-insensitive), pure-.wo base64, a constant-time comparator (ct_eq, no early exit), and the blessed principal slot — req.principal is "" until an auth middleware authenticates, then downstream handlers read who it is. BearerAuth and BasicAuth (with the WWW-Authenticate challenge) ship as middlewares; POLICY — which routes, which users, where secrets live — stays in the app, on top of bearer_token/basic_credentials/ct_eq.
• Data layer for free: handlers use @table + the query surface directly — durable, compiler-checked persistence in the same binary. No ORM, no database server.

Honest limits (v1, all deliberate)

• Concurrency is the APP's ten lines (iteration 35's serving slice): the framework ships serve_conn — the keep-alive loop with read/idle deadlines — and the app owns accept + one spawned ConnWorker actor per connection (web-app's pattern; spawn takes a class literal, so this cannot live in the library). Parallel requests, stalled-client eviction and parked idle keep-alive are gate-proven. The plain serve() stays single-threaded for simple apps.
• TLS: none, anywhere. Deploy behind nginx/caddy; the proxy terminates TLS+ALPN and gives browsers HTTP/2 while this backend speaks HTTP/1.1 keep-alive. See the web-app sample's README for the nginx sketch.
• Content-Length bodies only (no chunked encoding), no WebSockets/SSE, JSON-first (no templates). Form-encoded bodies parse through form_values(req) (+ and %XX decoded, nil on any other content-type); multipart/form-data through multipart_parts(req) (whole-body, bounded by BODY_MAX — the arc landed 2026-08-21; streaming uploads stay parked until their own slice) with part_named for fields; media_type(req) names the body's media type for content negotiation.

The v1 surface — status ledger (2026-08-22)

The target surface of framework v1, tracked per item. The memory-rich features (TTL cache, feature flags, durable job queue, transaction { }) are framework v2 — iteration 18, spec written, NOT part of v1. Legend: ✅ shipped · 🔶 partial (gap named) · ⬜ candidate slice · ⏸ parked behind a runtime iteration · 🔧 needs a runtime/compiler seam first (pure .wo cannot express it yet).

Transport

Parity reference: the Fiber v3.5.0 study read all 32 of Fiber's middleware packages against this framework on 2026-08-26. Nine already have a working counterpart here (CORS, basic auth, key/bearer auth, security headers, ETag, static files, logger, host authorization, recover-as-500). The rows below marked ⛔/⏸ are what it found missing, each with an owner.

Item	State
HTTP/1.1 parsing	✅ parses + 400-and-survive; duplicate Content-Length rejected outright (RFC 9112 §6.3, slice 2); BODY_MAX bounds headers and body
Keep-alive	✅ RETIRED close-when-idle (iteration 35's serving slice): under the app-owned fiber-per-connection pattern, idle connections PARK until the idle deadline; the sequential serve() keeps the old policy for simple apps
Read/write/idle timeouts	✅ iteration 35: per-call deadlines (net.read_dl/accept_dl/write_dl, nil/false = the expected timeout); serve_conn(read_ms, idle_ms) bounds slow-loris AND idle keep-alive
Request size limits	✅ BODY_MAX bounds headers AND body
Unix socket binding	✅ net.listen_unix(path) (iteration 35) — stale sockets unlinked before bind, same accept/read/write after
Graceful SIGTERM	✅ in-flight request completes (blocking model), listener + fds closed, storage is per-commit durable (WAL fdatasync — nothing to checkpoint)

Routing

Item	State
Path matching	🔶 linear scan, first-match-wins; a radix tree waits on a MEASUREMENT first — 22's harness landed (benched the DB, not the router); needs a perf-targets register entry
Method dispatch · path params · 404 · 405+Allow	✅
Wildcards	✅ *rest as the LAST pattern segment captures the joined tail (empty rest matches) — slice 2
Precedence rules	✅ registration order IS the rule; wildcards capture only in last position, so order stays the whole story
Route groups	✅ Group { prefix } + per-group before-middleware, mounted in one move — slice 2

Request/response

Item	State
Case-insensitive headers · query parsing	✅ (names lowercased on read)
JSON · form-urlencoded · multipart	✅ all three hooks (json.decode, form_values, multipart_parts)
Content negotiation	✅ media_type(req) request-side; accepts(req, mtype) response-side (exact, type/*, /; q-values stripped not ranked — ranking waits for an app serving alternates) — slice 2
Trusted-proxy client IP	🔶 client_ip(req) parses X-Forwarded-For; net.peer(fd) (iteration 35) exposes the peer — the verify middleware is now a pure-.wo candidate slice
Status/header setting · redirects	✅ builders + set_header
Lazy body streaming + backpressure · streaming responses · explicit commit point	⏸ UNBLOCKED by the arc (8/11 landed 2026-08-21) — stays parked until its own slice
ETag + conditional requests	✅ etag_for (quoted base64 SHA-256) + with_etag (If-None-Match → 304) over iteration 34's digest builtins — slice 2

Context & middleware

Item	State
Ordered middleware chain	✅ registration order, ?Resp short-circuits
Request-scoped context	✅ req.ctx map (slice 2): middleware writes, handlers read; identity stays in principal
Guaranteed teardown	🔶 every fd closes on every path (gate-proven); no user teardown hooks yet
Cancellation into pending storage ops	⏸ UNBLOCKED by the arc (8/11 landed 2026-08-21) — stays parked until its own slice
Panic recovery	🔶 trap = 500 and the server survives ✅; "rolls back the transaction" is framework v2 (needs transaction { }, iteration 18)

Storage integration (the differentiator — framework v2 territory)

Item	State
Transaction-per-request middleware (commit on 2xx, roll back otherwise)	⏸ v2 — needs iteration 18's transaction { }
Cancellation → rollback	⏸ arc landed; still needs v2's transaction { } (iteration 18)
Migration generation + review workflow	⬜ recorded future story (script-based destructive migrations)
Eager-loading API (N+1)	⬜ query-surface work (9-series), not framework code
Tenant-scoped query roots	⬜ future; wants the query surface to grow scoped roots first

Security

Item	State
Constant-time comparison · Authorization parsing · Basic auth · principal	✅ http/auth.wo, req.principal
CORS	✅ Cors { allow_origin } — preflight 204 (before) + origin stamp on every response (after) — slice 2
Security headers	✅ SecurityHeaders after-middleware (nosniff, DENY, referrer-policy); HSTS stays at the TLS proxy by design — slice 2
Host validation	✅ HostAllow { host } answers 421 before any route — slice 2
Strict parsing	✅ same item as Transport's row: duplicate Content-Length is a 400

Crypto (self-written, hard-stop after JWT HS256)

Item	State
base64	✅ pure .wo (http/auth.wo)
SHA-1 · SHA-256 · HMAC-SHA256	✅ C runtime builtins (iteration 34, ids 85–87, RFC-vector gated); SHA-512/CRC32 wait for a consumer
Unlocks — signed cookies, webhook verification, JWT HS256 verification	⬜ genuinely unblocked (integrity only needs iteration 34's HMAC); each its own slice; hard stop at JWT HS256 — no RS256, no JOSE zoo
Unlocks — CSRF, session integrity, JWT issuing	⛔ BLOCKED, corrected 2026-08-26. This row previously read "UNBLOCKED (the primitives exist since iteration 34)" and that was wrong: HMAC lets you authenticate a token, not mint one, and writeonce has no source of randomness at all (no getrandom, no CSPRNG builtin — grep the runtime). An HMAC over a guessable session id is a signed guess. A random-bytes builtin is iteration 39's first goal
Cookies (read + Set-Cookie)	⛔ absent in BOTH directions, and Resp.headers is a map<Text,Text> so it structurally cannot carry two Set-Cookie lines — iteration 39
Sessions · CSRF · rate limiting · idempotency	⬜ iteration 39. Limiter and idempotency need only a @table + time.ticks and are the cheapest wins available; sessions and CSRF wait on randomness + cookies. @table gives all four a durable store, where Fiber ships in-memory and expects Redis
Compression · SSE · byte ranges · chunked bodies	⏸ all four sit on the parked streaming seam (serialize() always emits Content-Length). Chunked REQUEST bodies are deliberately refused today (internal/parse.wo:153-157, request-smuggling note) — that refusal must survive whoever implements them
Typed binding of query/params/form/headers	⏸ Fiber's Bind reflects over struct tags; principle 13 forbids reflection, so the answer is iteration 29's @derive. JSON bodies already work via json.decode(t) as T
PATCH/OPTIONS/HEAD/ALL helpers · named routes · per-route body limit · request id · Location/Vary/Attachment	⬜ iteration 39 — registration and response sugar; BODY_MAX = 1048576 is currently one compile-time number for the whole server
proxy middleware	⛔ impossible today — no net.connect anywhere in the runtime (iteration 38)

Layout and privacy (iteration 17)

This project declares kind = "library" in wo.toml, so woc <dir> runs the FULL pipeline over it — parse, typecheck, interface satisfaction, ownership, GC inference — with no fn main required, and writes nothing. That retired iteration 16's woc --emit verification workaround. woc build on it fails naming the kind, unless a demo main is added (lib+bin is allowed).

• http/ — the public surface: Req/Resp and the response builders (types.wo), auth (auth.wo), multipart (multipart.wo), and the body-inspection pair media_type/form_values (form.wo).
• router/ — the route table and Logging.
• app.wo — App, the registration helpers, the dispatch loop.
• internal/ — not importable by a consumer. The connection-level request parser and carry-state record (parse.wo) and the serve loop, status text, and response serializer (serve.wo) live here. A consuming app that writes use porch/internal gets WO-E108 at that use. The rule is Go's: a path segment named internal is refused across the [deps] boundary only — the framework's own modules import it freely.

One honest disclosure: privacy restricts NAMING, not code size. internal/ modules still compile into the consumer's single image (there is no dead-code elimination); a consumer simply cannot name them.

The consuming sample

docs/examples/web-app — a small storefront importing this framework through [deps]. Its acceptance (just web-app) exercises the whole chain: fetch → lock → build → serve → durable restart.

Serving files

StaticFiles { dir, max_bytes } mounts a directory on a wildcard route:

app.get("/assets/*path", StaticFiles { dir: "assets", max_bytes: 2097152 })
app.get("/dl/*path",     StaticFiles { dir: "dist",   max_bytes: 16777216 })

Two rules, both refusals rather than repairs: a path containing .. is a 404 and never reaches the filesystem, and max_bytes is a hard ceiling — fs.read_all truncates above it, so set it above the largest file you mean to serve. Content types come from the extension; archives (.tar.gz, .tgz, .zip) also get content-disposition: attachment. Text is binary-safe in this language, so archives and images travel unchanged. Lifted out of the shop template 2026-08-25.