WeKan — Haxe + HaxeUI full-stack Kanban

A Trello/WeKan-style Kanban board built as a single Haxe codebase that compiles to both an HTML5 frontend (HaxeUI) and a portable, type-safe backend (tink_web) targeting either PHP (traditional web hosting) or JavaScript (AWS Lambda / Cloudflare Workers). See docs/design.md for the original brief.

Tech stack

Layer	Technology
Language	Haxe 5.0.0-preview.1 (via lix)
Frontend	HaxeUI (haxeui-core, haxeui-html5) — XML layouts + macro-built components
Backend	tink_web / tink_http — type-safe routing, dual PHP/JS targets
Database	PostgreSQL (PDO on PHP) — schema in src/db/schema.sql

Layout

src/
  shared/Models.hx        Board / Column / Card types — shared by client and server
  client/                 HaxeUI HTML5 app
    ClientMain.hx         entry point (Toolkit.init + mount)
    MainView.hx           board view + drag-and-drop controller
    ColumnView.hx         a list
    CardView.hx           a draggable card
    BoardStore.hx         client state (seeded; syncs to the API best-effort)
    RestClient.hx         calls the backend
    assets/*.xml          HaxeUI layouts
    assets/styles/        custom CSS
  server/                 tink_web backend
    ServerMain.hx         picks the container per target and runs the router
    Api.hx                @:get / @:post / @:put routes
    Db.hx                 storage interface
    MemoryDb.hx           in-memory store (default; runs anywhere)
    PostgresDb.hx         real PostgreSQL via PDO (#if php, -D wekan_postgres)
    php/PDO*.hx           minimal PDO externs
  db/schema.sql           PostgreSQL schema + indexes

Build

Install the toolchain (Node 24, Haxe 5, lix) then restore the pinned libraries:

npx lix download          # restores haxe_libraries/*.hxml (HaxeUI + tink stack)

The pinned versions are mutually compatible and known to build on Haxe 5.0.0-preview.1. Installing "latest" of each library instead pulls incompatible versions, so prefer lix download.

Command	Output
npx haxe build.hxml	both: client → deploy/www/html5/app.js, PHP server → deploy/www/api
npx haxe build.client.hxml	HTML5 client only
npx haxe build.server.php.hxml	PHP backend only
npx haxe build.server.js.hxml	JS / serverless backend only

build.sh / build.bat wrap these in a menu.

Run

The easiest way is the build.sh / build.bat menu, which builds and launches the whole app (client + backend) on one origin so the client's default /api base URL works with no CORS setup:

Menu	What it runs
7	HTML5 client + PHP backend → http://127.0.0.1:8080
8	HTML5 client + JS/Node backend → http://127.0.0.1:8080

Equivalent commands:

# Client + PHP backend (one PHP process serves static files and /api)
npx haxe build.client.hxml && npx haxe build.server.php.hxml
php -S 127.0.0.1:8080 tools/dev-router-php.php

# Client + JS backend (a Node HTTP dev server serves static files and /api)
npx haxe build.client.hxml && npx haxe build.devserver.node.hxml
PORT=8080 WWW_DIR=deploy/www/html5 node deploy/local/devserver.js

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8080 and try the API:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/boards/1
curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/cards -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{"columnId":1,"title":"Hello"}'
curl -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/cards/1/move -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{"columnId":2,"position":0}'

The production serverless build (build.server.js.hxml) compiles to an AWS Lambda handler, not a server — so local runs use the Node dev server (build.devserver.node.hxml → src/server/DevServerMain.hx) instead.

To persist to PostgreSQL, create the schema and build with the PDO store:

psql "$DATABASE_URL" -f src/db/schema.sql
npx haxe build.server.php.hxml -D wekan_postgres
# configure via env: DATABASE_DSN, DATABASE_USER, DATABASE_PASSWORD

API

Method	Path	Body	Returns
GET	/boards/:id	—	board + columns + cards
POST	/columns	{ boardId, title }	created column
POST	/cards	{ columnId, title, description? }	created card
PUT	/cards/:id/move	{ columnId, position }	moved card

All requests/responses are JSON.