# Development Overview

The purpose of this document is to provide a general overview of the application architecture.

## Technologies

Insomnia is a desktop application built on top of [Electron](http://electronjs.org/). Electron 
provides a Chromium runtime for the Insomnia web app to run inside of, as well as additional tools
to provide access to operating system features.

There are a few more technologies and tools worth mentioning:

- [`React`](https://reactjs.org/) is the library used for all UI components
- [`Less`](http://lesscss.org/) is used for styling UI components
- [`Electron Builder`](https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder) is used to help build,
  sign, and package Insomnia for distribution.
- [`Flow`](https://flow.org/) is used for adding types to the codebase. Not everything is Flow but
  all new code should be typed with Flow.
- [`Webpack`](https://webpack.js.org/) is the bundler used to compile the JS/Less/babel/etc
  libcurl library that Insomnia uses to make requests. Libcurl is the HTTP client of choice because
  it allows the deepest amount of debuggability and control of HTTP requests.
- [`nedb`](https://github.com/louischatriot/nedb) a local in-memory database
- [`node-libcurl`](https://github.com/JCMais/node-libcurl) is a NodeJS wrapper around the native
- [`Codemirror`](https://codemirror.net/) is a web-based, extendable, code editor used for 
  highlighting and linting of data formats like JSON, GraphQL, and XML.

## Project Structure

Insomnia uses [`lerna`](https://lerna.js.org/) to manage multiple npm packages within a single 
repository. There are currently two package locations:

- `/packages` contains related packages that are consumed by `insomnia-app` or externally
- `/plugins` contains plugin packages that are included by default with the application

## The `insomnia-app` Main Package

`/packages/insomnia-app` is the entry point for the app. All other packages are imported from this
one.

There are a few notable directories inside of it:

- `/main.development.js` Entry for Electron
- `/app/main` Stuff that runs inside Electron's main process
- `/app/ui` React components and styling 
- `/app/common` Utilities used across both main and render processes
- `/app/plugins` Logic around installation and usage of plugins
- `/app/models` DB models used to store user data
- `/app/network` Sending requests and performing auth (eg. OAuth 2)
- `/app/templating` Nunjucks and rendering related code
- `/app/sync(-legacy)?` and `/app/accounts` Team sync and account stuff

## Data and State Architecture

Insomnia stores data in a few places:

- A local in-memory NeDB database stores data for data models (requests, folder, workspaces, etc)
- A local Redux store contains an in-memory copy of all database entities

*Eventually, Redux could/should be removed, which would both reduce memory overhead and simplify
the codebase. NeDB should essentially replace it*

## Technical Debt

This is just brief summary of Insomnia's current technical debt.

- Loading large responses (~20MB) can crash the app on weaker hardware
- Redux stores an in-memory duplicate of the local DB, unnecessarily doubling memory usage. Moving
  forward, Redux shouldn't need to be considered much and may be able to be removed eventually.
- Bundling `libcurl` (native module) has caused many weeks of headaches trying to get builds working
  across Windows, Mac, and Linux. More expertise here is definitely needed.
- All input fields that support templating/autocomplete/etc are actually Codemirror instances. This
  isn't really debt but may affect things going forward
- Use of `libcurl` means Insomnia can't run in a web browser and can't support bidirectional socket
  communication