WebExpress

In the current development cycle of WebExpress 2.0.0-alpha, the framework has reached an important milestone in terms of quality assurance and stability. The current stage of development now includes more than 8,000 automated unit tests that continuously safeguard and validate a large portion of the framework's architecture. This testing foundation is complemented by extensive JavaScript and Node.js tests that cover client side components, integrations, and build processes. The large number of tests is not the primary goal itself, but rather the result of a consistently pursued commitment to quality. Every new feature, enhancement, and bug fix is accompanied by automated tests from the very beginning. This allows defects to be detected early, long before they can reach production environments. At the same time, it creates a reliable safety net for the ongoing evolution of the framework. The importance of automated testing has increased significantly throughout the development of We...

In modern software development with .NET the way we configure applications has changed fundamentally. While XML-based configuration files like a config.xml were the undisputed standard in the classic framework era the stage today belongs to cross-platform and cloud-native approaches. For a lightweight web server framework like WebExpress the switch to the modern appsettings.json offers an excellent opportunity to further increase performance while drastically simplifying handling for developers. The theoretical basis for this change is founded on the modern .NET Configuration Provider model which no longer views settings as rigid documents but as a flexible key-value store that can be dynamically fed from a wide variety of sources. The greatest advantage of this JSON-based configuration lies in its native and seamless integration into modern container environments like Docker. When WebExpress runs in a Docker container developers often need to control individual parameters such as port...

The way the framework is developed has changed fundamentally and now follows the philosophy of "from sketch to framework". While the focus was previously on manual programming, implementation is now handled entirely by Claude Code. The emphasis has shifted toward the conceptual design of ideas, where a simple mental or visual sketch serves as the direct starting point for new, production-ready components. The subsequent implementation, design, documentation, and creation of tutorial pages are fully automated from this initial concept. Compared to the traditional approach, this process is faster, more precise, more uniform, and more consistent. The human role has evolved into that of a system architect who defines requirements, provides the initial sketch, and steers the architectural direction. As a current use case, a static control ( ControlFormItemInputDnf ) for WebUI and a dynamic REST control ( ControlDataFormItemInputDnf ) for the WebApp are being implemented. This mirr...

The transition from Font Awesome to a fully custom SVG icon system represents a significant technological advancement in the evolution of WebExpress. Font based icons were functional but inherently limited because they remained bound to properties such as font size and color. This was sufficient for simple symbols yet restrictive for complex interfaces. By adopting SVG icons these limitations disappear entirely because SVGs exist as independent DOM elements that can be manipulated through the full range of CSS and JavaScript. This unlocks design capabilities that are practically unattainable with font icons. Path structures can be controlled with precision gradients can be defined natively and animations using stroke dasharray or stroke offset enable subtle micro interactions that make interfaces clearer and more expressive. The move to SVG also eliminates the licensing dependency that comes with third party icon fonts. Font Awesome is a powerful library but it introduces an external l...

The development of WebExpress version 2.0.0‑alpha marks an important step toward a more modern and cohesive framework architecture. As work continues across the three core modules WebUI, WebApp and WebCore, the halfway point of the alpha phase already shows how the system is evolving into a more flexible and efficient foundation for future applications. Many planned improvements have been implemented, while others are actively being refined, creating a clear picture of a release that significantly expands the capabilities of the framework. A central focus of the current development cycle is the introduction of new controls and the modernization of the user interface layer. These additions make interactions more dynamic and allow for more precise data binding and a clearer separation between presentation and logic. The UI benefits from new form components, configurable tables and enhanced list elements, all of which contribute to more adaptable and scalable interfaces. The rendering pi...

An update to the earlier post about the View, State, and Service architecture. When the View, State, and Service architecture was introduced, it replaced scattered state, direct DOM manipulation, and implicit service calls with a clear unidirectional data flow. Each control gained an explicit state object, a typed service descriptor, and a predictable path from initialization through user interaction to re‑rendering. The model worked well and was written entirely in C#. The previous post showed how a list evolved from a handful of scattered properties into a single, well‑structured definition. As the architecture rolled out across control families, a deeper boundary became visible. The state was clean but still belonged per control. Each control seeded its own state island, resolved its own service, and loaded itself on mount. Two controls on the same screen showing the same data fetched it independently. There was no natural way for one control to trigger a re‑render in another when ...