angular-node-foundation-seed

!!This Has to be updated!!

This project is an application skeleton for a typical AngularJS web app. You can use it to quickly bootstrap your angular webapp projects and dev environment for these projects.

The seed contains a sample AngularJS application and is preconfigured to install the Angular framework and a bunch of development and testing tools for instant web development gratification.

The seed app doesn't do much, just shows how to wire two controllers and views together.

Getting Started

To get you started you can simply clone the angular-seed repository and install the dependencies:

Prerequisites

You need git to clone the angular-seed repository. You can get it from http://git-scm.com/.

We also use a number of node.js tools to initialize and test angular-seed. You must have node.js and its package manager (npm) installed. You can get them from http://nodejs.org/.

Clone angular-seed

Clone the angular-seed repository using [git][git]:

git clone https://github.com/angular/angular-seed.git
cd angular-seed

Install Dependencies

We have two kinds of dependencies in this project: tools and angular framework code. The tools help us manage and test the application.

We get the tools we depend upon via npm, the [node package manager][npm].
We get the angular code via bower, a [client-side code package manager][bower].

We have preconfigured npm to automatically run bower so we can simply do:

npm install

Behind the scenes this will also call bower install. You should find that you have two new folders in your project.

node_modules - contains the npm packages for the tools we need
app/bower_components - contains the angular framework files

Note that the bower_components folder would normally be installed in the root folder but angular-seed changes this location through the .bowerrc file. Putting it in the app folder makes it easier to serve the files by a webserver.

Run the Application

We have preconfigured the project with a simple development web server. The simplest way to start this server is:

npm start

Now browse to the app at http://localhost:8000/app/index.html.

Directory Layout

app/                --> all of the files to be used in production
  css/              --> css files
    app.css         --> default stylesheet
  img/              --> image files
  index.html        --> app layout file (the main html template file of the app)
  index-async.html  --> just like index.html, but loads js files asynchronously
  js/               --> javascript files
    app.js          --> application
    controllers.js  --> application controllers
    directives.js   --> application directives
    filters.js      --> custom angular filters
    services.js     --> custom angular services
  partials/             --> angular view partials (partial html templates)
    partial1.html
    partial2.html

test/               --> test config and source files
  protractor-conf.js    --> config file for running e2e tests with Protractor
  e2e/                  --> end-to-end specs
    scenarios.js
  karma.conf.js         --> config file for running unit tests with Karma
  unit/                 --> unit level specs/tests
    controllersSpec.js      --> specs for controllers
    directivessSpec.js      --> specs for directives
    filtersSpec.js          --> specs for filters
    servicesSpec.js         --> specs for services

Serving the Application Files

While angular is client-side-only technology and it's possible to create angular webapps that don't require a backend server at all, we recommend serving the project files using a local webserver during development to avoid issues with security restrictions (sandbox) in browsers. The sandbox implementation varies between browsers, but quite often prevents things like cookies, xhr, etc to function properly when an html page is opened via file:// scheme instead of http://.

Running the App during Development

The angular-seed project comes preconfigured with a local development webserver. It is a node.js tool called [http-server][http-server]. You can start this webserver with npm start but you may choose to install the tool globally:

sudo npm install -g http-server

Then you can start your own development web server to serve static files from a folder by running:

http-server

Alternatively, you can choose to configure your own webserver, such as apache or nginx. Just configure your server to serve the files under the app/ directory.

Running the App in Production

This really depends on how complex is your app and the overall infrastructure of your system, but the general rule is that all you need in production are all the files under the app/ directory. Everything else should be omitted.

Angular apps are really just a bunch of static html, css and js files that just need to be hosted somewhere they can be accessed by browsers.

If your Angular app is talking to the backend server via xhr or other means, you need to figure out what is the best way to host the static files to comply with the same origin policy if applicable. Usually this is done by hosting the files by the backend server or through reverse-proxying the backend server(s) and webserver(s).

satblip / angular-node-foundation-seed Goto Github PK