Introduction

Nimbly is a full-stack atomic design system. Routing, templates, data, an admin and a REST API are parts of one system, so a custom product is assembled from small pieces that fit together instead of being wired up from separate tools.

What you build with

• Routes are folders. A folder under ext/uri/ is an address. Its index.tpl is the page.
• Templates are small. A template is HTML with shortcodes such as [#get record.title#]. A reusable template in ext/tpl/ becomes a shortcode of its own.
• Data is a resource. A resource is a folder with a .meta file that describes its fields, and one JSON file per record. There is no database to set up.
• The admin follows the data. Every resource gets list, edit and create screens, permissions and an API endpoint from its .meta file.
• Logic lives in libraries. PHP in ext/lib/ prepares data and talks to other systems. Markup stays in templates.

A page in three blocks

A page that lists articles is a resource, a route and a component:

ext/data/articles/.meta          the resource: the fields of an article
ext/uri/articles/index.tpl       the route: the page settings
ext/uri/articles/main.tpl        the route: the content of the page
ext/tpl/card-article/index.tpl   the component: one article in the list

<!-- ext/uri/articles/index.tpl -->
[#set page-title="Articles"#]
[#html#]

<!-- ext/uri/articles/main.tpl -->
[#data articles filter=published:1#]
<ul>
    [#repeat data.articles tpl=card-article#]
</ul>

<!-- ext/tpl/card-article/index.tpl -->
<li>[#get item.title#]</li>

The page is on /articles/. The same resource is editable in the admin and readable over the API without further code.

Two repositories

A project is two Git repositories in one folder. core/ is the framework and is the same for every project. ext/ is your application: its routes, templates, data, libraries and theme. You update core without touching your application, and your application never patches core.

Where to go next

• Installation gets a site running on your machine.
• Core and ext explains the two repositories and the folder layout.
• Templates and shortcodes explains how pages are written.
• Resources explains the data layer.
• Routing explains how addresses map to folders.

For AI agents

These docs are written for agents as much as for people. For AI agents explains how to work in a Nimbly project and where the plain-text versions of these pages are.