Helma, Server Side Javascript

December 26th, 2007 Posted by Don Albrecht

Helma Logo Helma is an impressive server side environment for deploying javascript based applications. Currently in version 1.6 it presents a powerful and useful way to construct web applications.

Key features:

Applications: Helma can serve multiple independent applications, each existing with its own global scope & code repository
Static Files: Helma can serve static files independently of applications.
Controller / Event Driven model
Powerful templating system
Hybrid Client / Server Object Model
Objects mapped to RDMS or stored in persistent XML object layer
Access to any Java package via addition of JAR to Classpath.

Although I haven’t played with it much yet, I’m excited to explore Helma as a way to build comprehensive web applications while focusing on my language of choice: Javascript.

Check out Helma at:

http://helma.org/

4 Comments

Chris Zumbrunn
December 27th, 2007 at 4:31 am

Don, first of all, welcome to the Helma way of building web apps. If you get stuck on your path of discovering Helma in any way, the Helma community will be happy to try to help, either on the helma-user mailing list or on the #helma IRC channel on freenode.net.

I’m curious, what exactly did you have in mind when mentioning “Hybrid Client / Server Object Model” as a feature?
Don Albrecht
December 27th, 2007 at 9:21 am

I was referring to the way in which the same object is used both for client side and server side coding.
Chris Zumbrunn
December 27th, 2007 at 10:07 am

You can use Javascript objects on both the server-side and client-side, but in order to have an object synchronised between the two sides, you would have to add that behavior yourself. It’s achievable, but not a built-in feature currently.

Unless you are referring to the way objects like req.data, res.data and session.data become available in skins as request, response and session properties. Maybe that is what you meant.
Don Albrecht
December 27th, 2007 at 10:19 am

That’s what I meant. I apologize for my fumbling of the concepts a bit. I’m still learning and your efforts to clarify things are greatly appreciated.