_Prtcl dev guide 3: Cortex modules

A Cortex module is the basic unit of MicroModule that we are gonna use as the building blocks of our applications.

Each module represents a slice of vertical functionality, built form these parts:

• Patterns: basic unit of logic of any Cortex module. They determine how a certain kind of object can behave (has links, redirects, can be cloned...)
• Lenses: native HTML elements that know how to render and interpret the module's patterns.
• Service providers: service classes that allow the module's patterns, lenses and other parts of Cortex to interact with the backends where the data is stored.

For example, tasks module would include:

• Patterns:
  • TaskPattern: implements the differents pattern that our Task entity follows.
  • DependencyPattern: implements generic dependency linking for any two content addressable objects.
• Lenses:
  • TaskDetail: renders the task and its details.
  • TaskDependencyGraph: renders the task and all its dependencies as a visual graph.
• Service providers:
  • TaskProvider: service with a generic get(hash: string): Task function and some other functionality: createTask or assignTask, for example.
  • DependenciesProvider: service that offers getters and setters of generic linking between content-addressable objects.

In this first part of the guide, we are going to learn how to use the documentsModule together with the eveesModule, to build a simple document editor with version control built-in.

Let's begin by configuring our backend services at 4 - Configuring service providers.