Structr in a nutshellAbout Structr
This chapter gives you an overview of what Structr is, for which purposes Structr is best suited and what functionality you can expect from it.
What is Structr?
Structr is an integrated low-code development and runtime environment that uses a graph database. With Structr, you can build enterprise web applications many times faster than with traditional development methods and run them directly on the Structr server in the same environment.
Structr provides low-code capabilities that allow users without extensive development skills to create simple applications, while experienced developers can create sophisticated, state-of-the-art enterprise solutions with 100% flexibility in all areas.
This unique combination of low-code and pro-code capabilities makes Structr an exceptionally useful and productive tool for application development, and its graph technology makes it the perfect platform for all connected data use cases.
Structr is a full-stack platform
You can carry out every step of the development process in Structr and only need your web browser: Development, testing, integration, operation and maintenance. Structr enables very short development iteration cycles, while allowing team collaboration and staged deployments.
A decade of experience
Initially designed as a content management system, Structr has been continuously extended and improved over the past years and is the sum of the experience and best practices from almost ten years of development and customer projects performed by an experienced team.
Why Structr?
With Structr, a small team or even a single developer can build large and sophisticated real-world software applications many times faster compared to traditional development methods.
Shorter development cycles
Structr accelerates many processes of modern software development because of its unique approach: Storing the definition of the app as a Graph. A graph is a network of objects (nodes), connected by edges (relationships).
Storing application information in form of a graph allows developers to modify the parts of the app at any time and directly run the software off the graph.
A Structr app has all components of a modern software application and runs on the Structr server.
Features
Structr combines a high degree of automation with great flexibility and lots of predefined functionality.
Development
You can develop applications with the integrated web-based development environment (Structr UI), allowing to manage HTML pages and markup elements as well as application logic in one tool, leading to very short development iteration cycles.
Collaboration of multiple developers using a version control system (e.g. git, SVN, etc.) is of course also possible, as well as the option to establish a staged deployment workflow.
Business Logic
Due to a very versatile and mature scripting engine, even complex business processes and business logic can be implemented in a short time.
Modules
Structr’s module system provides a large number of built-in functionality you can use in your own custom application. One way to use the provided functions is to create custom types and let them inherit from built-in data types.
Security
Fine-grained access control and integrated user management ensure that data can only be viewed by authorized users.
Interfaces
Various interfaces that are generated automatically based on the data model are available for integrating the application into larger IT landscapes.