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outline/ARCHITECTURE.md

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# Architecture
Outline is composed of a backend and frontend codebase in this monorepo. As both are written in Javascript, they share some code where possible. We utilize the latest ES6 language features, including `async`/`await`, and [Flow](https://flow.org/) typing. Prettier formatting and ESLint are enforced by CI.
## Frontend
Outline's frontend is a React application compiled with [Webpack](https://webpack.js.org/). It uses [MobX](https://mobx.js.org/) for state management and [Styled Components](https://www.styled-components.com/) for component styles. Unless global, state logic and styles are always co-located with React components together with their subcomponents to make the component tree easier to manage.
> Important Note: The Outline editor is built on [Prosemirror](https://github.com/prosemirror) and managed in a separate open source repository to encourage re-use: [rich-markdown-editor](https://github.com/outline/rich-markdown-editor).
```
app
├── components - React components reusable across scenes
├── embeds - Embed definitions that represent rich interactive embeds in the editor
├── hooks - Reusable React hooks
├── menus - Context menus, often appear in multiple places in the UI
├── models - State models using MobX observables
├── routes - Route definitions, note that chunks are async loaded with suspense
├── scenes - A scene represents a full-page view that contains several components
├── stores - Collections of models and associated fetch logic
├── types - Flow types
└── utils - Utility methods specific to the frontend
```
## Backend
The API server is driven by [Koa](http://koajs.com/), it uses [Sequelize](http://docs.sequelizejs.com/) as the ORM and Redis with [Bull](https://github.com/OptimalBits/bull) for queues and async event management. Authorization logic
is contained in [cancan](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cancan) policies under the "policies" directory.
Interested in more documentation on the API routes? Check out the [API documentation](https://getoutline.com/developers).
```
server
├── api - All API routes are contained within here
│ └── middlewares - Koa middlewares specific to the API
├── auth - OAuth routes for Slack and Google, plus email authentication routes
├── commands - We are gradually moving to the command pattern for new write logic
├── config - Database configuration
├── emails - Transactional email templates
│ └── components - Shared React components for email templates
├── middlewares - Koa middlewares
├── migrations - Database migrations
├── models - Sequelize models
├── onboarding - Markdown templates for onboarding documents
├── policies - Authorization logic based on cancan
├── presenters - JSON presenters for database models, the interface between backend -> frontend
├── services - Service definitions are triggered for events and perform async jobs
├── static - Static assets
├── test - Test helpers and fixtures, tests themselves are colocated
└── utils - Utility methods specific to the backend
```
## Shared
Where logic is shared between the client and server it is placed in this directory. This is generally
small utilities.
```
shared
├── i18n - Internationalization confiuration
│ └── locales - Language specific translation files
├── styles - Styles, colors and other global aesthetics
├── utils - Shared utility methods
└── constants - Shared constants
```