What we've got here

• Server Side rendering for instant page loading
• Entire Angular2 application is running in a Web Worker (UI always will be smooth)
• Preboot to catch browser events before Angular2 is ready to work.
• Webpack and its Code Splitting feature which allows us to lazy load parts of an application if needed.
• Live Reloading, a browser will be reloaded on any change in server or browser code. It works well for both a main thread and web workers.
• TypeScript with Typings
• Linting with TSLint
• Express - de facto standard for Node.js web apps.
• PM2 - most advanced Node.js process manager
• Unit testing with Karma
• End-to-End testing with Protractor
• Docker for easy deployments.

Requirements

• node >= 5.0.0
• npm >= 3.0.0

Quick start

# install npm global dependencies as necessary
npm install -g typescript typings

# install npm local dependencies
npm install

# build and run the production server
npm start

Go to http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

You may want to stop or restart the production server:

# stop the production server
npm stop

# restart the production server
npm restart

Building

# build the production project
npm run build

Running Server

# run the server with node
npm run serve

# OR
# run the server with pm2
npm run serve:pm2

Development with Live Reloading

# make sure that the production server is not running
npm stop

# run the development server with live reloading support
npm run build:dev

The development server will watch for any changes, make rebuilds and reload a browser. All built code will be kept in memory, so dist folder will not be generated (all means code for both client and server sides).

Turning server side rendering and web workers on/off

You can optionally turn server side rendering or web workers support on/off. You just need to change HAS_SS and HAS_WW in constants.js

// ...

// Server side rendering. Set it to `false` to turn it of.
exports.HAS_SS = 'NG2_SS' in process.env ? process.env.NG2_SS === 'true' : true;
// For example:
// exports.HAS_SS = false;

// Web workers support. Set it to `false` to turn it of.
exports.HAS_WW = 'NG2_WW' in process.env ? process.env.NG2_WW === 'true' : true;
// For example:
// exports.HAS_WW = 'NG2_WW' in process.env ? process.env.NG2_WW === 'true' : false;
// exports.HAS_WW = false;

//...

Then you need to restart the server to apply the changes:

# for production server
npm restart

# for development server - stop its process and run it again
npm run dev

Linting

# check the project (source files)
npm run lint

# check the project and start watching for its changes
npm run lint:watch

Testing

The next command will run both unit and end-to-end tests.

For end-to-end tests you need to start Selenium Server and application server first (see End-to-End Testing).

# run all tests (single run)
npm test

Unit Testing

# run unit tests (single run)
npm run unit

# run unit tests and start watch for changes
npm run unit:watch

# run unit tests for specified directory (path must be relative to root directory)
# currently you can specify paths only for "src" directory
npm run unit src/app

# run unit tests for specified file and start watch for changes
npm run unit:watch src/app/app.spec.ts

End-to-End Testing

For end-to-end tests you need to start Selenium Server (webdriver) and application server first.

# update selenium server (you need to run it only once)
npm run webdriver:update

# (1 terminal/cmd window) build and start application server
npm run build && npm run serve

# (2 terminal/cmd window) start Selenium Server (webdriver)
npm run webdriver:start

# (3 terminal/cmd window) run end-to-end test (single run)
npm run e2e

Cleaning

# remove "dist" and "logs" folders
npm run clean

# remove "dist" folder
npm run clean:dist

# remove "logs" folder
npm run clean:logs