angular-seed — the seed for AngularJS apps, now with CoffeeScript
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 clone https://github.com/danielwanja/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. - We get the angular code via
bower
, a client-side code package manager.
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 needbower_components
- contains the angular framework files
Run the Application
We have preconfigured the project with a simple development web server. The simplest way to start this server is:
gulp dev
Now browse to the app at http://localhost:8000
.
Directory Layout
├── app --> the application source code
│ ├── css --> css files
│ │ └── app.css --> default stylesheet
│ ├── img --> image files
│ ├── index.html --> app layout file (the main html template file of the app)
│ ├── js --> javascript files
│ │ ├── app.coffee --> application
│ │ ├── controllers.coffee --> application controllers
│ │ ├── directives.coffee --> application directives
│ │ ├── filters.coffee --> custom angular filters
│ │ ├── services.coffee --> custom angular services
│ │ └── views.coffee --> defines module for the view templates
│ └── views --> angular view partials (partial html templates)
│ ├── partial1.hamlc
│ └── partial2.hamlc
├── bower.json --> define external dependencies like AngularJA.
├── dist --> all of the files to be used in production (CoffeeScript and HAMLC compiled to javascript)
├── gulpfile.coffee --> the build system
├── package.json --> node external dependencies for the build system
└── test --> test config and source files
├── e2e --> end-to-end specs
│ └── scenarios.coffee
├── karma.conf.coffee --> config file for running unit tests with Karma
├── protractor.conf.js --> config file for running e2e tests with Protractor
└── unit --> unit level specs/tests
├── controllersSpec.coffee --> specs for controllers
├── directivesSpec.coffee --> specs for directives
├── filtersSpec.coffee --> specs for filters
└── servicesSpec.coffee --> specs for services
Testing
There are two kinds of tests in the angular-seed application: Unit tests and End to End tests.
Running Unit Tests
The angular-seed app comes preconfigured with unit tests. These are written in Jasmine, which we run with the Karma Test Runner. We provide a Karma configuration file to run them.
- the configuration is found at
test/karma.conf.js
- the unit tests are found in
test/unit/
.
The easiest way to run the unit tests is to use the supplied npm script:
gulp test
End to end testing
The angular-seed app comes with end-to-end tests, again written in Jasmine. These tests are run with the Protractor End-to-End test runner. It uses native events and has special features for Angular applications.
- the configuration is found at
test/protractor.conf.js
- the end-to-end tests are found in
test/e2e/
Protractor simulates interaction with our web app and verifies that the application responds correctly. Therefore, our web server needs to be serving up the application, so that Protractor can interact with it.
gulp dev
In addition, since Protractor is built upon WebDriver we need to install this. The angular-seed project comes with a predefined script to do this:
npm run update-webdriver
This will download and install the latest version of the stand-alone WebDriver tool.
Once you have ensured that the development web server hosting our application is up and running and WebDriver is updated, you can run the end-to-end tests using the supplied gulp script:
gulp protractor
This script will execute the end-to-end tests against the application being hosted on the development server.
Updating Angular
Previously we recommended that you merge in changes to angular-seed into your own fork of the project. Now that the angular framework library code and tools are acquired through package managers (npm and bower) you can use these tools instead to update the dependencies.
You can update the tool dependencies by running:
npm update
This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the package.json
file.
You can update the Angular dependencies by running:
bower update
This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the bower.json
file.
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.
Then you can start your own development web server to serve static files from a folder by
running:
gulp dev
Moreover, Gulp will sit and watch the source files for changes and the application is live reloaded in the browser.
TODO: show enabling proxy
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 dist/
and bower_components/
directory.
Everything else should be omitted.
TODO: dist+bower_components. Show S3 deploy
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).
Continuous Integration
Travis CI
Semaphore is a continuous integration service, which can monitor GitHub for new commits to your repository and execute scripts such as building the app or running tests.
Add your project to Semaphore then create the following build commands:
npm install
npm run test
This will cause Travis to run your tests when you push to GitHub.
Travis CI
Travis CI is a continuous integration service, which can monitor GitHub for new commits
to your repository and execute scripts such as building the app or running tests. The angular-seed
project contains a Travis configuration file, .travis.yml
, which will cause Travis to run your
tests when you push to GitHub.
You will need to enable the integration between Travis and GitHub. See the Travis website for more instruction on how to do this.
Note: I haven't tried this project on Travis.
Contact
For more information on AngularJS please check out http://angularjs.org/