Architecture Explained

Flask-boiler is built on facade pattern, and allows front-end to read and write to objects that are abstractions of domain models.

Disambiguation

There are 2+ ways to run the view layer.

1. Document-As-View: Persist all view models to firestore, and client reads/writes to firestore.

   • Document is refreshed every time the bounding domain models change
   • Firestore serves Document at near 0 latency (cached) if the client attaches a listener to the view model
   • Performance depends on how often the domain model is changed

2. Flask-As-View: only the binding structure is persisted, and client reads/writes to flask REST API resources.

   • Bounding domain models are read every time the client requests the resource
   • May experience latency, but overall lower in server cost since the ViewModel is not persisted
   • Performance depends on how often the view model is read

3. A combination of 1 and 2: build read-intensive microservices with Document-As-View and change-intensive micro services with Flask-As-View.

Performance

Document-As-View has better performance if data is read more than it's changed, and the view models served are limited or specific to a user.

Flask-As-View has better performance when the domain model is changed often, and the client rarely reads all data available to a specific user.

Flask-boiler is not a well-tested concept, but criticisms are welcomed. At least, we can strive to build a backend framework that is simple and friendly to beginners who want to prototype their backend easily so that they can focus on transforming ideas.