Introduction to Sponge

What is Sponge?

Sponge is a powerful and easy-to-use Go development framework. Its core philosophy is "Definition is Code", means generating modular Go code by parsing SQL, Protobuf, and JSON files. These code modules can be flexibly combined to build various types of complete backend services.

Sponge provides a one-stop project development solution that covers code generation, development, testing, API documentation, and deployment. It helps developers easily build stable, reliable, and high-performance backend services (including RESTful APIs, gRPC, HTTP+gRPC, gRPC Gateway, etc.) in a "low-code" approach, greatly improve the efficiency and quality of project development.

Origin of the project name sponge

The modular code generated by sponge can be flexibly combined to form a complete backend service. This process is similar to the characteristics of sponge cells: dissociated sponge cells can automatically reaggregate into a new sponge.

• Modular code ⟷ Sponge cells
• Complete service code ⟷ New sponge

Why Choose Sponge?

• Extremely High Development Efficiency: Automatically generates CRUD APIs, framework code, and glue code (non-business logic code), completely solving the problem of extensive repetitive work in traditional development processes.

• Out-of-the-Box: Covers the entire development lifecycle (generation → development → testing → deployment → monitoring), avoiding fragmented toolchains.

• Standardized Best Practices: Based on mature solutions from the Go community (Gin/gRPC/Protobuf, etc.), eliminating the hassle of technology selection.

• Minimal Learning Curve: Get started quickly and focus on business logic through code generation and clear examples.

• Suitable for Team Collaboration: Unifies project structure and improves code maintainability.

• AI Collaboration: Based on the Sponge standardized directory and file structure, it intelligently generates business logic code, significantly reducing manual coding and improving development efficiency and code consistency.

• Quickly Start Developing Projects for Developers Transitioning from Other Languages to Go: Provides clear documentation, code examples, and best practice guides to help developers from languages like Java, Python, and PHP transition seamlessly. It follows Go language conventions for API design, reducing the learning curve and allowing you to quickly build production-grade applications.

Key Features

• One-click Generation of Complete Backend Service Code.
  For Web, gRPC, or HTTP+gRPC services that only require CRUD APIs, there is no need to write any Go code. Simply connect to a database (such as MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite), and you can generate complete backend service code with a single click and easily deploy it to a Linux server, Docker, or Kubernetes.

• Efficiently Develop General-Purpose Services, from Definition to Implementation in One Step.
  To build general-purpose Web, gRPC, HTTP+gRPC, or gRPC Gateway services, you only need to focus on the following three steps:

  • Define database tables (SQL DDL);
  • Describe the API in a Protobuf file (Protobuf IDL);
  • Implement the business logic (supports the built-in AI assistant to automatically generate and merge business logic code).

  All basic code, including CRUD APIs, service framework, and glue code, is automatically generated by Sponge, allowing developers to focus on core business and comprehensively improve development efficiency.

• Supports Custom Templates for Flexible Extension.
  Sponge supports generating various types of code required for a project through custom templates, not limited to the Go language. For example, backend code, frontend code, testing code, build and deployment scripts, etc.

• Generate Code on the Page, Simple and Easy to Use.
  Sponge provides code generation on a page, avoiding complex command-line operations. You can generate code with a single click by simply filling in parameters on the page.

• Sponge Collaborates with an AI Assistant to Achieve Infrastructure Automation and Business Logic Intelligence.
  Sponge, combined with its built-in AI assistant (DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Gemini), builds a complete, efficient, and intelligent development solution:

  • Sponge: Responsible for the automatic generation of infrastructure code, including service framework, CRUD APIs, custom APIs (without business logic), etc., ensuring a unified and standardized architecture.
  • AI Assistant: Focuses on the implementation of business logic, assisting with tasks such as database table design, Protobuf API definition, and business logic writing, reducing repetitive work and improving R&D efficiency.

Applicable Scenarios

Sponge is suitable for quickly building various types of high-performance backend services, applicable scenarios are as follows:

• Developing RESTful API services

• Building microservices projects

• Cloud-native development

• Refactoring old projects

• Serving as a starting point for Go beginners or teams to learn Go project structure and best practices

Furthermore, developers can generate various types of code that meet business needs through custom templates.