Syntropy

A Web Framework for Ruby

What is Syntropy?

| Syntropy: A tendency towards complexity, structure, order, organization of ever more advantageous and orderly patterns.

Syntropy is a WIP web framework for building multi-page and single-page apps. Syntropy uses file tree-based routing, and provides controllers for a number of common patterns, such as a SPA with client-side rendering, a standard server-rendered MPA, a REST API etc.

Routing

Routing is performed automatically by following the tree structure of the Syntropy app. A simple example:

site/
├ _layout/
| └ default.rb
├ _articles/
| └ 2025-06-01-hello_world.md
├ api/
| └ v1.rb
├ assets/
| ├ css/
| ├ img/
| └ js/
├ about.md
├ archive.rb
├ index.rb
└ robots.txt

The routing follows the file hierarchy, and Syntropy knows how to serve static asset files (CSS, JS, images...) as well as render markdown files and run custom Ruby code.

What does a Syntropic Ruby module look like?

Consider archive.rb in the example above. We want to get a list of articles and render it with the given layout:

# archive.rb
@@layout = import('$layout/default')

def articles
  Syntropy.stamped_file_entries('/_articles')
end

@@layout.apply(title: 'archive') {
  div {
    ul {
      articles.each { |article|
        li { a(article.title, href: article.url) }
      }
    }
  }
}

But a module can be something completely different:

# api/v1.rb
class APIV1 < Syntropy::RPCAPI
  def initialize(db)
    @db = db
  end

  # /posts
  def all(req)
    @db[:posts].order_by(:stamp.desc).to_a
  end

  def by_id(req)
    id = req.validate_param(:id, /^{4,32}$/)
    @db[:posts].where(id: id).first
  end
end

APIV1.new(Syntropy.env.open_db)

Basically, the return value of the module is a template or a resource that responds to the request.