on raster specs

The Raster framework

Raster is the framework that implements the RTO design pattern. It is written in PHP and lives at github.com/draganescu/rasterPHP. It is made for web artefacts: sites, landing pages, blogs, newsletters and small apps, made by people or by agents.

How it works

A request picks a view, which is a plain HTML file. The parts of the page that change are HTML comments that name a model and a method:

<h1><!-- print.cms.headline -->Good coffee, slow mornings.<!-- /print.cms.headline --></h1>

<!-- render.cms.menu('order=name') -->
<article>
  <h2><!-- print.name -->Flat white<!-- /print.name --></h2>
  <p><!-- print.price -->14<!-- /print.price --> lei</p>
</article>
<!-- /render.cms.menu('order=name') -->

The view still opens in a browser as a mock-up. When Raster serves it, each annotation pulls its data from the model it names. The template owns all the text on the page, including error messages and emails; models only decide what shows.

What the markup gives you

  • A CMS with no schema files. print.cms.headline declares an editable field on that page, and render.cms.menu declares a collection whose fields are the keys inside it. Items get slugs, drafts, scheduled publishing, ordering, filters, pagination and their own URLs. Editors change content in the page, and every save is a new revision.
  • Forms with their rules in the HTML. required, type, minlength, pattern and the rest are enforced on the server too, and every message is written in the template. Posts from other sites and bots are refused.
  • Accounts and a newsletter, with every screen written in your templates: sign-up, login, password reset, roles, protected pages, double opt-in and sending any page as an issue.
  • Feeds and data views. news.rss, sitemap.xml or feed.json are views too, escaped for their format.
  • Events between models. When a booking should subscribe the guest to the newsletter, one model sends an event and the other listens. The template never has to know.
  • A page cache, translations, mail over SMTP, and a JSON API for every model.

Made for agents too

Raster is built so an AI agent can make and run a site as easily as a person:

  • AGENTS.md is the complete specification, in one file.
  • raster lint checks every view, form, alert, event binding and query, and a broken template in development shows a list of what is wrong instead of half a page.
  • raster schema shows the content model the templates define, compared with the database.
  • An MCP server lets an agent read and edit the content, limited to the fields the templates declare.
  • raster doctor says whether a site is healthy, up to date and ready for production.

Compared with the big frameworks

Raster is small: one controller, one view file per URL, no build step and SQLite by default. It does less than Laravel or Symfony on purpose. What it generates is easy to follow, pages are fast and cached for visitors, and every page is editable as soon as it exists.

Getting started shows how to make a site with it.