skywalker

Skywalker

Skywalker is a batteries-included web framework for Go — an open re-implementation in the lineage of the "Celeritas" course framework. It wires together routing, rendering, sessions, caching, mail, a database + migration layer, pluggable remote filesystems, and a code-generating CLI, so you can start building instead of assembling boilerplate.

One App.New() call reads your .env, creates the project layout, and boots every subsystem.

func main() {
    sky := &skywalker.Skywalker{}
    if err := sky.New(rootPath); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    sky.ListenAndServe()
}

Features

• Routing & middleware — chi router, with CSRF (nosurf) and session middleware wired in.
• Rendering — Jet templates (default) or Go html/template, selected by RENDERER.
• Sessions — scs with cookie, Redis, MySQL, or Postgres stores.
• Caching — Redis or Badger behind a single Cache interface.
• Mail — a queued mailer over channels; SMTP or an API service (Mailgun / SendGrid / SparkPost).
• Database & migrations — Postgres (pgx) or MySQL, with golang-migrate.
• Remote filesystems — one FS interface with four real backends: MinIO, S3, SFTP, WebDAV.
• Extras — authenticated AES-GCM encryption, HMAC-signed URLs, structured logging (slog: text in debug, JSON in production), a cron scheduler, and JSON/XML response helpers.
• CLI — scaffolds new apps, models, handlers, migrations, auth, sessions, and mail templates.

Requirements

• Go 1.25+ (both this module and generated apps build in module mode — no vendoring).
• Optional, depending on which subsystems you enable: Postgres/MySQL, Redis, an SMTP server, and a MinIO/S3/SFTP/WebDAV endpoint.

Install the CLI

git clone https://github.com/stefanlester/Skywalker.git
cd Skywalker
go build -o skywalker ./cmd/cli      # Windows: -o skywalker.exe

Run ./skywalker help to see every command.

Create and run an app

./skywalker new myapp

This clones the skywalker_engine skeleton, generates a fresh .env (with a random 32-char encryption key), rewrites the module path, and runs go mod tidy. Then:

cd myapp
go run .                 # starts on the PORT set in .env (skeleton default: 4000)

Open http://localhost:4000. On first boot New() creates the standard folders: handlers, migrations, views, data, public, tmp, logs, middleware.

For the full guide — handlers, rendering, sessions, DB, cache, mail, filesystems, APIs — see docs/USAGE.md.

Configuration

Everything is driven by environment variables (loaded from .env). The common ones:

An app boots with no external services using SESSION_TYPE=cookie, empty DATABASE_TYPE, and empty CACHE — handy for a first run.

Remote filesystems

All four backends implement one interface:

type FS interface {
    Put(fileName, folder string) error
    Get(destination string, items ...string) error
    List(prefix string) ([]Listing, error)
    Delete(itemsToDelete []string) bool
}

New() constructs each backend only if its gate variable is set — MINIO_SECRET, S3_SECRET, SFTP_HOST, WEBDAV_HOST — and stores it in App.FileSystems keyed by name ("MINIO", "S3", "SFTP", "WEBDAV"). Pick one at request time through the interface:

fs, ok := app.FileSystems[fsType].(filesystems.FS)   // fsType: "MINIO" | "S3" | "SFTP" | "WEBDAV"
if ok {
    files, _ := fs.List("/")
}

SFTP currently uses InsecureIgnoreHostKey; verify host keys via known_hosts before production use.

Note on MinIO: the MinIO server community edition is no longer maintained upstream (source-only, steered toward commercial AIStor). Skywalker is unaffected in code: both S3-family backends use the still-maintained minio-go client and speak the standard S3 protocol, so they work with any S3-compatible server — SeaweedFS (the dev default bundled with the skeleton, verified end-to-end), Garage, Cloudflare R2, AWS S3, or an existing MinIO deployment.

CLI reference

skywalker new <name>          clone + scaffold a new application
skywalker make migration <n>  create up/down migration files
skywalker make auth           create auth migrations, models, and middleware
skywalker make handler <n>    create a stub handler
skywalker make model <n>      create a model in the data directory
skywalker make session        create a sessions table migration
skywalker make mail <n>       create starter mail templates
skywalker migrate             run all up migrations
skywalker migrate down        reverse the most recent migration
skywalker migrate reset       run all down, then all up migrations
skywalker version | help

Development

go build ./...
go vet ./...
go test ./...     # tests in cache, render, session, mailer, filesystems

Tests run with no external services; the mailer's SMTP tests spin up a MailHog container via dockertest when Docker is available and skip cleanly otherwise. CI (build + vet + test) runs on every push and pull request via GitHub Actions.

Repositories

• Skywalker — this framework (github.com/stefanlester/skywalker).
• skywalker_engine — the demo/skeleton app that skywalker new clones.

Status

Actively developed. The filesystem layer (all four backends), module-mode build, and CI are in place. Live end-to-end coverage for the S3/SFTP/WebDAV backends and a project LICENSE are still to come.