bootstrap.js - Bootstrapping your node application in the cloud

Bootstraping a node.js web application is easy enough. Bootstrap.js automates the whole application creation and strcture Bootstrap.js provides a fast way for developers who want to start with node.js to create a structured node webapp and to deploy it in the cloud. Currently supported hosting providers are Heroku and Joyent's no.de.

Testing artifacts

The bootstrapped application adds minimal testing structures for:

• Unit tests
• Web service testing
• Browser-driven testing via zombie http://zombie.labnotes.org/

Node modules used

The application uses the following components:

• Express framework for routing http://expressjs.com/
• Jade template engine http://jade-lang.com/
• Stylus CSS generator https://github.com/learnboost/stylus
• JQuery 1.5.2 (zombie barfs when using 1.6.x)

Application structure

The project structure has been inspired by http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5178334/folder-structure-for-a-nodejs-project

controllers/
views/                <-- view templates
public/               <-- public files
public/stylesheets    <-- stylus css files
spec/                 <-- BDD tests and web service tests
test/                 <-- unit tests
web.js
package.json

To cope with differences between Heroku and no.de deployment reqiurements, some files and config options are redundant in one or the other environment (i.e. Procfile is used only by Heroku).

Prerequisites

• node.js >= v0.4.0
• npm >= 1.0.17
• git >= 1.7

Cloud deployment

For cloud deployment one of the following are mandatory:

• A Heroku account (free signup at http://heroku.com) and local connectivity
• A no.de account (gratis signup at http://no.de) and a provisioned machine

Note: due to a Heroku limitation, both zombie and nodeunit cannot be installed in that environment and thus they can't be specified in the package.json file. The install script adds these two modules separately.

What happens upon install

A complete web application is seeded in the specified target directory. If a cloud environment is specified then the app is remotely deployed there.

How-to boostrap

Just run:

./init-webapp.sh target-dir <options>

and at the end of the bootstraping process, a fully functional application skeleton will be ready in target-dir, on a local git repo and (optionally) pushed to the cloud. This skeleton should provide enough breadth to start developing your own web app in style.

Alternatives

There is at least one other way to create a skeleton node app via expressjs. Here's how to bootstrap an node app with express, jade and stylus mixed in: express -t jade -c stylus