about

Déjà Vu is a free and open-source platform for building web apps. It features a catalog of full-stack functionality and an HTML-like language for assembling web apps using the catalog. With Déjà Vu you can build complex apps fast, without writing any client- or server-side procedural code.

Déjà Vu implements a new approach to app development. In this approach, you build apps by synchronizing, in a declarative fashion, GUI components of granular, full-stack modules that implement end-user behavior.

• batteries included In Déjà Vu, a web app is constructed by combining concepts. A concept is a self-contained, reusable, increment of functionality that is motivated by a purpose defined in terms of the needs of a user. For example, think of the “comment” functionality on Facebook or “rating” on Amazon. We have a growing catalog of concepts you can use to build your app.

• assemble with HTML The assembly requires no traditional code: concepts are glued together by declarative bindings that ensure appropriate synchronization and dataflow. These bindings are expressed in an HTML-like language, augmenting conventional layout declarations that determine which user interface widgets from which concepts are used, and how they are placed on the page. Concepts are configured in JSON and you can style your app with CSS.

• conventional output A compiled Déjà Vu app is a standard MongoDB-Express-Angular-Node.js (MEAN) app, which can be deployed using popular cloud providers. Follow our quickstart guide to create an app and run it locally on your machine. You’ll find the compiled output in the .dv directory.

Déjà Vu is a research prototype and you shouldn’t rely on it for anything important at this point, but we’d love to hear what you think! You can play around with it and create an issue (or email me) with your feedback or questions.