Prefab Development Guide

Prefab is a Go server framework that simplifies building production-ready gRPC and HTTP services with a plugin-based architecture.

Core Concepts

• Server: Central component that manages gRPC/HTTP services and plugins
• Plugins: Modular components for auth, storage, templates, etc.
• Services: gRPC service implementations with automatic HTTP gateway
• Handlers: Custom HTTP handlers for non-gRPC endpoints

Prefab servers commonly compose multiple gRPC services into a single process. This enables a service-oriented monolith architecture where related services share infrastructure (auth, storage, logging) while maintaining clear boundaries. As utilization requirements become known, individual services can be extracted into separate deployments without changing their interfaces.

Quick Start Pattern

import "github.com/dpup/prefab"

func main() {
    s := prefab.New(
        prefab.WithPort(8080),
        prefab.WithPlugin(auth.Plugin()),
        // Add more options...
    )

    s.RegisterService(
        &myservice.MyService_ServiceDesc,
        myservice.RegisterMyServiceHandler,
        &myServiceImpl{},
    )

    if err := s.Start(); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

Resources

Load these resources based on the specific task:

Server & Services

• Project Setup - Proto files, Makefile, project structure
• Server Setup - Server creation, initialization, and basic configuration
• gRPC & HTTP - Registering services, HTTP handlers, static files

Authentication & Authorization

• Authentication - OAuth, password auth, magic links, fake auth for testing
• OAuth Server - Build an OAuth2 authorization server for third-party apps
• Authorization - Declarative access control with proto annotations, policies, role describers

Features

• SSE Streaming - Server-Sent Events for real-time updates
• Configuration - YAML, environment variables, functional options
• Storage - Storage plugins (memory, SQLite)
• File Uploads - File upload/download with authorization
• Email - SMTP email sending
• Templates - Go HTML template rendering
• Event Bus - Publish/subscribe inter-plugin communication

Development

• Custom Plugins - Creating plugins with dependencies and lifecycle
• Error Handling - Stack traces, gRPC codes, log fields
• Logging - Structured context-aware logging
• Security - CSRF, headers, HTTPS, token security

Code Style

• Use errors.New(), errors.NewC(), errors.Wrap() for errors with stack traces
• Standard library imports first, then third-party
• Document public APIs with GoDoc comments
• Follow plugin interface patterns with Plugin() function and PluginName constant

When to Load Resources

Task	Resources to Load
Starting a new project	project-setup.md, server-setup.md
Creating a new server	server-setup.md, configuration.md, logging.md
Adding authentication	auth.md, server-setup.md
Building an OAuth server	oauth-server.md, auth.md, storage.md
Setting up access control	authz.md, auth.md
Adding real-time features	sse.md
Creating a custom plugin	plugins.md, eventbus.md
Handling errors properly	errors.md, logging.md
Security review	security.md
Adding storage	storage.md
Adding HTTP/gRPC endpoints	grpc-http.md
Adding file uploads	uploads.md, authz.md
Sending emails	email.md, templates.md
Rendering templates	templates.md
Inter-plugin communication	eventbus.md
Setting up logging	logging.md