# nimforum

NimForum is a light-weight forum implementation with many similarities to Discourse. It is implemented in the [Nim](https://nim-lang.org) programming language.

**This fork uses [BaraDB](https://github.com/yourusername/baradb) instead of SQLite.** BaraDB is a custom database engine that communicates via a TCP wire protocol. The forum connects to a running BaraDB server instead of opening a local SQLite file.

## Architecture

```
┌─────────────┐      HTTP       ┌─────────────┐      TCP       ┌─────────────┐
│   Browser   │ ◄─────────────► │  nimforum   │ ◄────────────► │   BaraDB    │
│             │                 │  (Jester)   │   (wire proto) │   Server    │
└─────────────┘                 └─────────────┘                └─────────────┘
                                       │
                                       ▼
                                ┌─────────────┐
                                │  public/    │
                                │ (JS, CSS)   │
                                └─────────────┘
```

## Why BaraDB?

This project was created to test and validate BaraDB's SQL compatibility and wire protocol. Running a real-world application like NimForum against BaraDB surfaced many practical issues (reserved keywords, type conversions, async protocol safety) that unit tests alone would not catch.

## Changes from upstream

| Area | Upstream | This fork |
|------|----------|-----------|
| Database | SQLite (file) | BaraDB (TCP server) |
| DB driver | `db_connector/db_sqlite` | `baradb_sqlite.nim` (drop-in adapter) |
| Keywords | `status`, `key`, `like` | Renamed to `usrStatus`, `sessionKey`, `postLike` |
| Date/time | `DATETIME('now')` | `NOW()` |
| FTS search | SQLite FTS4 | Disabled (returns empty) |
| HTTP backend | httpbeast (multi-threaded) | asynchttpserver (single-threaded)* |

\* *Switched to `asynchttpserver` via `-d:useStdLib` because httpbeast's worker threads share the global `db` ref, causing GC corruption and segfaults at startup.*

## Requirements

* Nim >= 2.0
* Nimble
* libsass / libsass-dev (for SCSS compilation)
* A running BaraDB server (see below)

## Quick start

### 1. Start BaraDB

```bash
cd ../Baradb
BARADB_JWT_SECRET=test nimble build_debug
BARADB_JWT_SECRET=test ./build/baradadb
```

The server listens on `127.0.0.1:9472` by default.

### 2. Build and run the forum

```bash
cd nimforum

git submodule update --init --recursive

# Build CSS and frontend JS
nimble frontend

# Create development database (admin/admin)
nimble devdb

# Compile and run backend
nimble backend
```

The forum will be available at `http://localhost:5000`.

### Build tasks

```bash
nimble backend      # Compile & run the forum backend
nimble runbackend   # Run the compiled backend
nimble frontend     # Build CSS + JS frontend assets
nimble devdb        # Create a dev database with seed data
nimble testdb       # Create a test database
nimble blankdb      # Create an empty database
```

## Project layout

```
nimforum/
├── src/
│   ├── forum.nim           # Main Jester backend
│   ├── baradb_client.nim   # BaraDB wire-protocol client
│   ├── baradb_sqlite.nim   # Drop-in db_sqlite adapter
│   ├── setup_nimforum.nim  # DB initialization script
│   └── frontend/           # Karax SPA sources
├── public/
│   ├── js/forum.js         # Compiled frontend (generated)
│   ├── css/                # Compiled SASS + Spectre
│   └── images/
├── Baradb/                 # BaraDB source (sibling directory)
└── nimforum.nimble
```

## Known issues / limitations

* **FTS search disabled** — BaraDB does not support SQLite FTS4 virtual tables. The search endpoint returns empty results.
* **No `COLLATE NOCASE`** — Some string comparisons may be case-sensitive where the original was not.
* **Manual `nextId()`** — Auto-increment is simulated with `SELECT COALESCE(MAX(id),0)+1`, which is not atomic under high concurrency.
* **Single-threaded HTTP** — Due to the global `db` ref holding async TCP state, the forum runs on a single async thread. For a busy site you would need per-request DB connections or a connection pool.

## License

MIT — see upstream [nimforum](https://github.com/nim-lang/nimforum) for original copyright.