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README.md

Moped Angular

The project structure and this readme is based on ngBoilerplate.

Quick Start

Install Node.js and then:

$ git clone git://github.com/martijnboland/moped
$ cd moped/angular
$ sudo npm -g install grunt-cli karma bower
$ npm install
$ bower install
$ grunt watch

Finally, open http://localhost:3001 in your browser.

Happy hacking!

Overall Directory Structure

At a high level, the structure looks roughly like this:

moped/angular/
  |- grunt-tasks/
  |- karma/
  |- src/
  |  |- app/
  |  |  |- <app logic>
  |  |- assets/
  |  |  |- <static files>
  |  |- common/
  |  |  |- <reusable code>
  |  |- less/
  |  |  |- main.less
  |- vendor/
  |  |- angular-bootstrap/
  |  |- bootstrap/
  |  |- placeholders/
  |- .bowerrc
  |- bower.json
  |- build.config.js
  |- Gruntfile.js
  |- module.prefix
  |- module.suffix
  |- package.json

What follows is a brief description of each entry, but most directories contain their own README.md file with additional documentation, so browse around to learn more.

  • karma/ - test configuration.
  • src/ - our application sources.
  • vendor/ - third-party libraries. Bower will install packages here. Anything added to this directory will need to be manually added to build.config.js and karma/karma-unit.js to be picked up by the build system.
  • .bowerrc - the Bower configuration file. This tells Bower to install components into the vendor/ directory.
  • bower.json - this is our project configuration for Bower and it contains the list of Bower dependencies we need.
  • build.config.js - our customizable build settings; see "The Build System" below.
  • Gruntfile.js - our build script; see "The Build System" below.
  • module.prefix and module.suffix - our compiled application script is wrapped in these, which by default are used to place the application inside a self-executing anonymous function to ensure no clashes with other libraries.
  • package.json - metadata about the app, used by NPM and our build script. Our NPM dependencies are listed here.

Detailed Installation

The Build System

The best way to learn about the build system is by familiarizing yourself with Grunt and then reading through the heavily documented build script, Gruntfile.js. But you don't need to do that to be very productive with ngBoilerplate. What follows in this section is a quick introduction to the tasks provided and should be plenty to get you started.

The driver of the process is the delta multi-task, which watches for file changes using grunt-contrib-watch and executes one of nine tasks when a file changes:

  • delta:gruntfile - When Gruntfile.js changes, this task runs the linter (jshint) on that one file and reloads the configuration.
  • delta:assets - When any file within src/assets/ changes, all asset files are copied to build/assets/.
  • delta:html - When src/index.html changes, it is compiled as a Grunt template, so script names, etc., are dynamically replaced with the correct values configured dynamically by Grunt.
  • delta:less - When any *.less file within src/ changes, the src/less/main.less file is linted and copied into build/assets/ng-boilerplate.css.
  • delta:jssrc - When any JavaScript file within src/ that does not end in .spec.js changes, all JavaScript sources are linted, all unit tests are run, and the all source files are re-copied to build/src.
  • delta:coffeesrc - When any *.coffee file in src/ that doesn't match *.spec.coffee changes, the Coffee scripts are compiled independently into build/src in a structure mirroring where they were in src/ so it's easy to locate problems. For example, the file src/common/titleService/titleService.coffee is compiled to build/src/common/titleService/titleService.js.
  • delta:tpls - When any *.tpl.html file within src/ changes, all templates are put into strings in a JavaScript file (technically two, one for src/common/ and another for src/app/) that will add the template to AngularJS's $templateCache so template files are part of the initial JavaScript payload and do not require any future XHR. The template cache files are build/template-app.js and build/template-common.js.
  • delta:jsunit - When any *.spec.js file in src/ changes, the test files are linted and the unit tests are executed.
  • delta:coffeeunit - When any *.spec.coffee file in src/ changes, the test files are linted, compiled their tests executed.

As covered in the previous section, grunt watch will execute a full build up-front and then run any of the aforementioned delta:* tasks as needed to ensure the fastest possible build. So whenever you're working on your project, start with:

$ grunt watch

And everything will be done automatically!

Build vs. Compile

To make the build even faster, tasks are placed into two categories: build and compile. The build tasks (like those we've been discussing) are the minimal tasks required to run your app during development.

Compile tasks, however, get your app ready for production. The compile tasks include concatenation, minification, compression, etc. These tasks take a little bit longer to run and are not at all necessary for development so are not called automatically during build or watch.

To initiate a full compile, you simply run the default task:

$ grunt

This will perform a build and then a compile. The compiled site - ready for uploading to the server! - is located in bin/, taking a cue from traditional software development. To test that your full site works as expected, open the bin/index.html file in your browser. Voila!