Angular Hapi Couch

This is an example application that uses Angular.js, the node.js based web and API server Hapi and CouchDB for storage. It make heavy use of the cores-ng library created by [Till Reitemeyer] (https://github.com/skoni), but with architecture geared towards a future project I have in mind. It includes a single Users schema and supports basic CRUD operations. You can also load sample users into CouchDB from the home page.

I created this application to learn how the following components work together:

1. Angular.js - front-end framework (v1.2.0-rc.3)
2. Bootstrap - css & layouts (v3.0.0)
3. Hapi.js - node.js based API and web server (v1.14.0)
4. CouchDB - storage

In terms of connecting all this together, [Till Reitemeyer] (https://github.com/skoni) has already provided the beginnings of a workable framework, including:

1. [cores-server] (https://github.com/skoni/cores-server) - bootstrap for hapi server (v0.2.2)
2. [cores-ng] (https://github.com/skoni/cores-ng) - angular.js cores layer (based on v0.4.5)
3. [cores-hapi] (https://github.com/skoni/cores-hapi) - hapi cores resource api (v0.4.4)
4. [cores] (https://github.com/skoni/cores) - couchdb resource layer with validation (v0.4.2)

Note: the above libraries are still under development (particularly ng-cores) and there is no documentation yet.

Prerequisites

1. CouchDB (port 5984)
2. NPM & Bower installed globally

Installation

Clone the repository locally.

cd angular-hapi-couch
npm install

Note: you may need to run sudo npm install.

bower install

Database Setup

Create the database:

grunt db

To add test users, you can run the following grunt task. This will add 20 users to the CouchDB database. You can also do this later from the application home page.

grunt users

Build and Run

Build the application (various tasks including compiling templates, jade and stylus files, combining the cores-ng files):

grunt

Start the web server:

grunt server

Browse to: [http://localhost:8080] (http://localhost:8080)

You can add a set of 20 test users from the home page by clicking the Create Users button. Note: this option will only be available if there are no users in the database.

Screens

Screen captures of a few pages are available here:

• [Screens] (https://github.com/iotaweb/angular-hapi-couch/wiki/Screens)

API Endpoints

Below is a list of API endpoints:

GET       /api                        Root
GET       /api/_index                 Models
     
GET       /api/users/_schema          User schema
GET       /api/users/_views/all       View all users
GET       /api/users/_views/names     View user names
GET       /api/users                  List users
     
POST      /api/users                  Create user
GET       /api/users/:id              Read user
PUT       /api/users/:id              Update user
DELETE    /api/users/:id              Delete User

The API endpoints are also listed here: [http://localhost:8080/api] (http://localhost:8080/api)

Watch

In development you can run the following to watch for changes to jade, stylus and templates:

grunt watch

Note: you will still need to stop and start your web server to see these changes in the browser. It just saves you having to manually recompile everything with grunt when your code changes.

TODO: setup watch on Hapi server.

Known Issues

This sample application is quite incomplete and is being refactored constantly to incorporate changes and new developments in the various cores libraries. The following are what I know to be incomplete or buggy:

• No thoughts have been given to security yet, i.e. restricting actions via the API.
• Pagination in Users page - no ability to navigate to pages directly. Also would be nice if pages were represented in the url path and could handle a page refresh, e.g. users/page/2 (maybe need to use offset instead of startkey?).
• Create/edit forms show validation before record is dirty (still works, just unsightly IMO).
• Incomplete support for input type validations, e.g. email.
• No tests yet (bad Rob...).

Endnote

I am very much a beginner when it comes to node, angular.js, hapi.js and couchDB - so there are no doubt fundamental mistakes in the way I have approached things. This is very much a learning exercise for me.

A big thank you to Till for his work in this space - it is appreciated (well, at least by me :)