by Tom Preston-Werner, Peter Pistorius, Rob Cameron, David Price, and more than 250 amazing contributors (see end of file for a full list).
Redwood is an opinionated, full-stack, JavaScript/TypeScript web application framework designed to keep you moving fast as your app grows from side project to startup.
At the highest level, a Redwood app is a React frontend that talks to a custom GraphQL API. The API uses Prisma to operate on a database. Out of the box you get tightly integrated testing with Jest, logging with Pino, and a UI component catalog with Storybook. Setting up authentication (like Auth0) or CSS frameworks (like Tailwind CSS) are a single command line invocation away. And to top it off, Redwood's architecture allows you to deploy to either serverless providers (e.g. Netlify, Vercel) or traditional server and container providers (e.g. AWS, Render) with nearly no code changes between the two!
By making a lot of decisions for you, Redwood lets you get to work on what makes your application special, instead of wasting cycles choosing and re-choosing various technologies and configurations. Plus, because Redwood is a proper framework, you benefit from continued performance and feature upgrades over time and with minimum effort.
Redwood is the latest open source project initiated by Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub (most popular code host on the planet), creator of Jekyll (one of the first and most popular static site generators), creator of Gravatar (the most popular avatar service on the planet), author of the Semantic Versioning specification (powers the Node packaging ecosystem), and inventor of TOML (an obvious, minimal configuration language used by many projects).
TUTORIAL: The best way to get to know Redwood is by going through the extensive Redwood Tutorial. Have fun!
QUICK START: You can install and run a full-stack Redwood application on your machine with only a couple commands. Check out the Quick Start guide to get started.
EXAMPLES: If you'd like to see some simple examples of what a Redwood application looks like, take a look at the following projects:
We are obsessed with developer experience and eliminating as much boilerplate as possible. Where existing libraries elegantly solve our problems, we use them; where they don't, we write our own solutions. The end result is a JavaScript development experience you can fall in love with!
Here's a quick taste of the technologies a standard Redwood application will use:
- React
- GraphQL (GraphQL Yoga + Envelop + Apollo Client)
- Prisma
- Jest
- Storybook
- Babel
- Webpack
- Fastify
- Pino
- Opinionated defaults for formatting, file organization, Webpack, Babel, and more
- Simple but powerful routing (all routes defined in one file) with dynamic (typed) parameters, custom types, and named route functions (to generate correct URLs)
- Automatic page-based code-splitting
- Boilerplate-less GraphQL API construction
- Cells: a declarative way to fetch data from the backend API
- Generators for pages, layouts, cells, SDL, services, etc.
- Scaffold generator for CRUD operations specific to a DB table
- Forms with easy client- and/or server-side validation and error handling
- Fast Refresh (hot reloading) for faster development
- Database and Data migrations
- Envelop Plugins that enhance the GraphQL lifecycle from context to execution
- Simple but powerful GraphQL Directives to validate access or transform resolved data
- Logging using Pino including transports
- Webhooks: signature verification and payload signing for handling both incoming and outgoing
- Jest testing utilities integrated across your codebase: mocks, test DB, generated boilerplate tests, scenarios, Web (components), and API (services, serverless functions, and webhooks)
- Page prerendering at build time
- Built-in Storybook integration: generated boilerplate component stories, tests, graphql/api mocks (Cells), and scenarios
- API Server using Fastify for Serverful deploys
- First-class Jamstack-style deployment to both serverless and traditional infrastructure: Netlify, Vercel, Serverless, Render, Docker container (for AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc.), and many more on the way!
A Redwood application is split into two parts: a frontend and a backend. This is represented as two JS/TS projects within a single monorepo. We use Yarn to make it easy to operate across both projects while keeping them in a single Git repository.
The frontend project is called web and the backend project is called api.
For clarity, we will refer to these in prose as "sides", i.e. the "web side" and
the "api side". They are separate projects because code on the web side will end
up running in the user's browser while code on the api side will run on a server
somewhere. It is important that you keep this distinction clear in your mind as
you develop your application. The two separate projects are intended to make
this obvious. In addition, separate projects allow for different dependencies
and build processes for each project.
The api side is an implementation of a GraphQL API. Your business logic is organized into "services" that represent their own internal API and can be called both from external GraphQL requests and other internal services. Redwood can automatically connect your internal services with Apollo, reducing the amount of boilerplate you have to write. Your services can interact with a database via Prisma's ORM, and Prisma's migration tooling provides first-class migrations that take the pain out of evolving your database schema.
The web side is built with React. Redwood's router makes it simple to map URL paths to React "Page" components (and automatically code-split your app on each route). Pages may contain a "Layout" component to wrap content. They also contain "Cells" and regular React components. Cells allow you to declaratively manage the lifecycle of a component that fetches and displays data. Other Redwood utility components make it trivial to implement smart forms and various common needs. An ideal development flow starts with Storybook entries and Jest tests, so Redwood closely integrates both, making it easy to do the right thing.
You'll notice that the web side is called "web" and not "frontend". This is because Redwood conceives of a world where you may have other sides like "mobile", "desktop", "cli", etc., all consuming the same GraphQL API and living in the same monorepo.
A framework like Redwood has a lot of moving parts; the Roadmap is a great way to get a high-level overview of where the framework is relative to where we want it to be. And since we link to all of our GitHub project boards, it's also a great way to get involved! Roadmap
(A history, by Tom Preston-Werner)
Where I live in Northern California there is a type of tree called a redwood. Redwoods are HUGE, the tallest in the world, some topping out at 115 meters (380 feet) in height. The eldest of the still-living redwoods sprouted from the ground an astonishing 3,200 years ago. To stand among them is transcendent. Sometimes, when I need to think or be creative, I will journey to my favorite grove of redwoods and walk among these giants, soaking myself in their silent grandeur.
In addition, Redwoods have a few properties that I thought would be aspirational for my nascent web app framework. Namely:
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Redwoods are beautiful as saplings, and grow to be majestic. What if you could feel that way about your web app?
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Redwood pinecones are dense and surprisingly small. Can we allow you to get more done with less code?
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Redwood trees are resistant to fire. Surprisingly robust to disaster scenarios, just like a great web framework should be!
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Redwoods appear complex from afar, but simple up close. Their branching structure provides order and allows for emergent complexity within a simple framework. Can a web framework do the same?
And there you have it.
A gigantic "Thank YOU!" to everyone below who has contributed to one or more Redwood projects: Framework, Website, Docs, and Create-Redwood Template. 🚀
Tom Preston-Werner founder, leadership |
Peter Pistorius founder |
Rob Cameron founder |
David Price founder, leadership |
Dominic Saadi maintainer |
David Thyresson maintainer |
Daniel Choudhury maintainer |
Tobbe Lundberg maintainer |
Kris Coulson maintainer |
Keith T Elliot community |
Barrett Burnworth community |
Josh Walker maintainer |
Amy Haywood Dutton maintainer |
Redwood projects (mostly) follow the all-contributions specification. Contributions of any kind are welcome.
