tinystruct Development Patterns

Architecture and implementation patterns for building modules with the tinystruct Java framework – a lightweight, high-performance framework that treats CLI and HTTP as equal citizens, requiring no main() method and minimal configuration.

Core Principle

CLI and HTTP are equal citizens. A transport-neutral @Action uses Mode.DEFAULT (or omits mode) and has no HTTP-only dependencies. Such an action can run from both a terminal and a web browser. Mode.DEFAULT removes the transport restriction; it does not make an HTTP-dependent method CLI-compatible. Request and Response parameters come from HTTP context attributes and remain null when those attributes are absent, as in an ordinary CLI invocation. Keep shared logic independent of HTTP objects, sessions, and uploads, and call it from transport-specific entry points when needed. This "dual-mode" capability is the core design philosophy of tinystruct. An action with a transport-specific mode (Mode.CLI, Mode.HTTP_GET, Mode.HTTP_POST, ...) is deliberately bound to that transport: the framework rejects it from the other one with "The action is not allowed to be executed."

Primary Development Tool: bin/dispatcher

bin/dispatcher is the default, highest-priority tool for developing, running, testing, and debugging a tinystruct application — reach for it before an IDE run configuration, a hand-written main(), curl, or a browser. Because transport-neutral @Action methods are dual-mode by design, bin/dispatcher lets you exercise routing, argument binding, and business logic directly from the terminal, with the fastest possible feedback loop and no server/browser required. Actions bound to an HTTP method (Mode.HTTP_POST, Mode.HTTP_GET, ...) cannot be reached from bin/dispatcher; test those through an HTTP client against the running server.

# Run a CLI-compatible @Action directly to verify a new action
# (the class must be imported; see --import or default.import.applications in application.properties)
bin/dispatcher greet/James --import com.example.MyService
bin/dispatcher echo --words "Praise the Lord"