Mars

A lightweight web toolkit for the Go language.

• Latest Mars version: 1.1.0 (released May 1, 2022)
• Supported Go versions: 1.13 … 1.23

Mars is a fork of the fantastic, yet not-that-idiomatic-and-pretty-much-abandoned, Revel framework. You might take a look at the corresponding documentation for the time being.

Have a question? Head over to our Discussions! 💬

Quick Start

Getting started with Mars is as easy as:

1. Adding the package to your project

   $ go get github.com/roblillack/mars

2. Creating an empty routes file in conf/routes

   $ mkdir conf; echo > conf/routes

3. Running the server as part of your main package

   package main
   
   import "github.com/roblillack/mars"
   
   func main() {
     mars.Run()
   }

This essentially sets up an insecure server as part of your application that listens to HTTP (only) and responds to all requests with a 404. To learn where to go from here, please see the Mars tutorial

Differences to Revel

The major changes since forking away from Revel are these:

• More idiomatic approach to integrating the framework into your application:
  • No need to use the revel command to build, run, package, or distribute your app.
  • Code generation (for registering controllers and reverse routes) is supported using the standard go generate way.
  • No runtime dependencies anymore. Apps using Mars are truly standalone and do not need access to the sources at runtime (default templates and mime config are embedded assets).
  • You are not forced into a fixed directory layout or package names anymore.
  • Removed most of the "path magic" that tried to determine where the sources of your application and revel are: No global AppPath, ViewsPath, TemplatePaths, RevelPath, and SourcePath variables anymore.
• Added support for Go 1.5+ vendoring.
• Vendor Mars' dependencies as Git submodules.
• Added support for HTTP dual-stack mode.
• Added support for generating self-signed SSL certificates on-the-fly.
• Added graceful shutdown functionality.
• Added CSRF protection.
• Integrated Static controller to support hosting plain HTML files and assets.
• Removed magic that automatically added template parameter names based on variable names in Controller.Render() calls using code generation and runtime introspection.
• Removed the cache library.
• Removed module support.
• Removed support for configurable template delimiters.
• Corrected case of render functions (RenderXml --> RenderXML).
• Fix generating reverse routes for some edge cases: Action parameter is called args or action parameter is of type interface{}.
• Fixed a XSS vulnerability.

Documentation

• Getting started with Mars
• Moving from Revel to Mars in 7 steps

Links

• Code Coverage
• Go Report Card
• GoDoc