status-desktop/devuser_guide/content/api/architecture_development/folder_structure.md

title	description	lead	date	lastmod	draft	images	menu	toc
Folder Structure	Folder Structure		2020-10-06T08:48:23+00:00	2020-10-06T08:48:23+00:00	false		api parent architecture_development	true

Stack

• 1. status-go (src/status/libstatus)
• 2. nim-status / business logic & persistence (src/status)
• 3. initializer wrapper (src/app/<module>/core.nim)
  • currently contains signals which should be moved into layer 2.
• 4. views & view logic (src/app/<module>/view.nim & ui/*.qml)

Folder structure

src/ - where most of the source is

src/app - Where the Application is

src/app/<module> - module e.g 'chat', 'profile'

src/app/<module>/core.nim - wrapper for this module

src/app/<module>/view.nim - view, exposed data and some view specific logic

src/app/<module>/views/* - views

src/signals - signals (should be refactored & moved into src/status)

src/status - business logic

src/status/libstatus - integration with status-go

nim_status_client.nim - the main file

ui/ - QML files

src/status

This folder contains the library that abstracts the status app business logic, it's how the app can interact with status-go as well as how they can obtain data, do actions etc..

• this folder can only import / call files from src/status/libstatus (exception for libraries ofc)
• only files in app/ should be able to import from src/status (but never src/status/libstatus)

src/status/libstatus

This folder abstracts the interactions with status-go

• generally this folder should only contain code related to interacting with status-go
• it should not import code from anywhere else (including src/status)
• nothing should call libstatus directly
• only the code in status/ should be able to import / call files in src/status/libstatus

src/app

This folder contains the code related to each section of the app, generally it should be kept to a minimum amount of logic, it knows what to do, but not how to do it

src/app/<module>/

• each <module> folder inside app/ should correspond to a section in the app (exception for the onboarding/ and login/ currently)
• there should be no new folders here unless we are adding a brand new section to the sidebar
• files inside a <module> should not import files from another <module>
• while the code here can react to events emited by nim-status (src/status) it should not be able to emit events

src/app/<module>/core.nim

This file is the controller of this module, the general structure of controller is typically predictable and always the same

• it imports a view
• it imports the nim-status lib
• it contains an init method
• it exposes a QVariant

the constructor has typically the following structure

type NodeController* = ref object of SignalSubscriber
  status*: Status
  view*: NodeView
  variant*: QVariant

proc newController*(status: Status): NodeController =
  result = NodeController()
  result.status = status
  result.view = newNodeView(status)
  result.variant = newQVariant(result.view)

method onSignal(self: NodeController, data: Signal) =
  var msg = cast[WalletSignal](data)
  # Do something with the signal...

• with the exception of src/status/ and its own files within src/app/<module> (i.e the views), a controller should not import files from anywhere else (including other files inside app/)

src/app/<module>/view.nim

This file contains the main QtObject for this <module> and exposes methods to interact with the views for the controller and QML.

• this file cannot import any other file except:
  • other views within this <module>
  • src/status/ to use their types
• if there are multiple subviews, then they should go into the views/ folder and initialized in this file.

Future directions

• signals will be refactored/moved from core.nim files and signals/ into src/status/ and instead handle as events
• instead of importing src/status/libstatus in src/status files, we will do dependency injection, this allow us to more easily do unit tests, as well as transition from status-go to nimstatus
• src/status should be reanamed to src/nim-status
• src/status/libstatus should be renamed to src/nim-status/status-go