Marten is a Crystal web framework that makes building web applications easy, productive, and fun.
Marten's syntax is inherited from the slickness and simplicity of the Crystal programming language. On top of that, the framework tries to be KISS and DRY compliant as much as possible to reduce time-to-market.
Marten gives you the ability to build full-featured web applications by leveraging the bare metal performances of the Crystal programming language. It also tries to optimize for decent compile times.
Marten adheres to the "batteries included" philosophy. Out of the box, it provides the tools and features that are commonly required by web applications: ORM, migrations, translations, templates, sessions, emailing, authentication, etc.
Marten gives you the ability to contribute extra functionalities to the framework easily. Things like custom model field implementations, new route parameter types, session stores, etc... can be registered to the framework easily.
Marten allows separating projects into a set of logical "apps". These apps can also be extracted to contribute features and behaviors to other Marten projects. The goal here is to allow the creation of a powerful apps ecosystem over time.
Marten comes with security mechanisms out of the box. Things like cross-site request forgeries, clickjacking, or SQL injections are taken care of by the framework to avoid common security issues.
The tools you need are built into the framework. Database ORM, translations, migrations, templates, sessions, emailing, authentication, and many more can be leveraged right away.
class Article < Marten::Model
field :id, :big_int, primary_key: true, auto: true
field :title, :string, max_size: 128
field :content, :text
field :author, :many_to_one, to: User
endMarten comes with an object-relational-mapper (ORM) that you can leverage to describe your database using Crystal classes and a convenient DSL.
class Article < Marten::Model
field :id, :big_int, primary_key: true, auto: true
field :title, :string, max_size: 128
field :content, :text
field :author, :many_to_one, to: User
endHandlers are responsible for processing web requests and for returning responses. This can involve loading records from the database, rendering HTML templates, or producing JSON payloads.
class ArticleListHandler < Marten::Handler
def get
render "articles/list.html", { articles: Article.all }
end
end
{% extend "base.html" %}
{% block content %}
{% for article in articles %}
- {{ article.title }}
{% endfor %}
{% endblock content %}Templates provide a convenient way to define your presentation logic and to write contents (such as HTML) that are rendered dynamically. This rendering can involve model records or any other variables you define.
{% extend "base.html" %}
{% block content %}
{% for article in articles %}
- {{ article.title }}
{% endfor %}
{% endblock content %}The Marten framework is open source and is distributed under the MIT license. It is maintained and developed on GitHub.