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🚀 General Features of DotHRB

DotHRB is a high-performance application framework designed to bring modern web patterns to the Harbour ecosystem. It provides a compiled architecture for building scalable WebAPIs, WebApps, and Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) across Windows, Linux, and macOS. Whether deployed as a local application on a single PC or Mac, hosted across a small local network, or served as a public internet service, DotHRB delivers a modern user experience that closely rivals native desktop applications. SQLite is embedded directly into the framework. It is ready to use out of the box, allowing you to leverage high-performance, local data storage with zero external database configuration or driver setup.

⚙️ Structured​

DotHRB utilizes a structured Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach that allows for a clean separation of concerns between the user interface and your underlying business logic.

  • Class-Based Logic: Controllers, Pages, Services, Models, and Repositories are standard Harbour classes. These are compiled into portable byte-code and bundled into a single .app package providing optional enhanced code integrity and security.
  • Reuse existing code: Controllers, Services and Repositories can seamlessly integrate with existing code by calling standard functions directly as static methods or referencing public global functions housed in specialized Module classes.
  • Powerful Data Binding: Includes specialized built-in directives (such as @UseModel and @FieldsFromModel) to map model properties to the presentation UI layout.

🏎️ Performance​

  • Multithreading Server: Engineered to handle high-concurrency workloads with a thread engine that maximizes modern multi-core processors.
  • Pre-compressed Static Assets: To maximize throughput, the server supports serving prebuilt Brotli (.br) and Gzip (.gz) files. By serving pre-compressed assets, the server eliminates on-the-fly compression costs, significantly reducing TTFB (Time to First Byte).

🛡️ Security & Stability​

Security & Deployment Disclaimer

The DotHRB HTTP server is engineered specifically to execute Harbour code and serve application assets—it is not designed to operate on the front lines of the public internet. It lacks native features like SSL/TLS certificate management and HTTPS protocol enforcement.

  • Development & Internal Networks: DotHRB can be used directly as a standalone HTTP server for local development or within secure internal networks that do not require HTTPS.
  • Public Production: If DotHRB is accessible from the public internet, it must be deployed behind an industry-proven reverse proxy (such as Nginx, Caddy, or Apache). Always terminate TLS/SSL at the proxy layer and implement standard security best practices to safeguard your application.

  • DotHRB undergoes regular automated and manual testing using industry-standard security and performance tools. This proactive testing regimen is designed to continually improve our security baseline, with the goal of providing resistance to common web vulnerabilities and maintaining low latency under heavy load with every release.

  • Real-Time Monitoring: Includes built-in endpoints to monitor server performance and stack health in real-time.

📦 PWA/WEB Applications​

The server is specifically tuned for Progressive Web Applications (PWA) support and Rest Apis.

  • PWA Optimization: Native support for serviceWorker based applications and specialized UI logic to eliminate "white flash" during navigation.

  • Modern Asset Pipeline: Integrates npm modules like esbuild and TypeScript to handle compilation, minification, and bundling of assets.