Technical overview

The core tech

In brief, the main technologies behind Apostrophe are:

• Node.js: Popular server-side JavaScript runtime. We originally chose Node.js to achieve a fully-JavaScript development experience for developers. It has continued to improve over time, delivering high performance and powerful features we can use.
• Express: Un-opinionated Node.js web framework. Express is the most widely used web framework for Node.js. Because it is simple, un-opinionated, and well-known, it was straightforward to extend it to suit Apostrophe's needs.
• MongoDB: Secure, document-based database engine. We chose MongoDB for its fluent JavaScript-based API, its safety from "SQL injection"—style attacks, its developer-friendliness, and its support for documents with varying schemas in the same collection.
• Nunjucks: Richly featured template language for JavaScript. Nunjucks provides tons of features, extensibility, and a syntax nearly identical to Twig, Jinja, and other Django-inspired templating languages.

Directory structure

There are a few directories and top-level files that are especially important in Apostrophe projects. Here is a rough overview of these files and folders you will see in the official boilerplate, starter-kit-essentials.

Folder/File	What is it?
app.js	The heart of the application. This is where you tell Apostrophe what modules are in your project and set a few top-level parameters.
/modules	All project-level modules and configuration for installed modules.
/public	Public, static files (not managed through the CMS). Apostrophe will generate specific directories inside, but you can also use it as needed.
/views	Template files that do not belong to any one module. Apostrophe looks for site wrapper templates here, including layout.html.

TIP

Core module configuration is all done in a subdirectory of modules: modules/@apostrophecms. This keeps core modules organized together and out of the way, following the npm scoping pattern.