MEAN Stack

MEAN is a boilerplate that provides a nice starting point for MongoDB, Node.js, Express, and AngularJS based applications. It is designed to give you a quick and organized way to start developing MEAN based web apps with useful modules like Mongoose and Passport pre-bundled and configured. We mainly try to take care of the connection points between existing popular frameworks and solve common integration problems.

Prerequisites

• Node.js - Download and Install Node.js. You can also follow this gist for a quick and easy way to install Node.js and npm
• MongoDB - Download and Install MongoDB - Make sure mongod is running on the default port (27017).

Tools Prerequisites

• NPM - Node.js package manage; should be installed when you install node.js.
• Bower - Web package manager. Installing Bower is simple when you have npm:

$ npm install -g bower

Optional

• Grunt - Download and Install Grunt.

$ npm install -g grunt-cli

Additional Packages

• Express - Defined as npm module in the package.json file.
• Mongoose - Defined as npm module in the package.json file.
• Passport - Defined as npm module in the package.json file.
• AngularJS - Defined as bower module in the bower.json file.
• Twitter Bootstrap - Defined as bower module in the bower.json file.
• UI Bootstrap - Defined as bower module in the bower.json file.

Quick Install

The quickest way to get started with MEAN is to install the meanio package from NPM.

Install MEAN CLI:

$ [sudo] npm install -g meanio@latest
$ mean init <myApp>
$ cd <myApp> && npm install

We recommend using Grunt to start the server:

$ grunt

If grunt aborts because of JSHINT errors, these can be overridden with the force flag:

$ grunt -f

Alternatively, when not using grunt you can run:

$ node server

Then, open a browser and go to:

http://localhost:3000

Troubleshooting

During install some of you may encounter some issues.

Most issues can be solved by one of the following tips, but if are unable to find a solution feel free to contact us via the repository issue tracker or the links provided below.

Update NPM, Bower or Grunt

Sometimes you may find there is a weird error during install like npm's Error: ENOENT. Usually updating those tools to the latest version solves the issue.

• Updating NPM:

$ npm update -g npm

• Updating Grunt:

$ npm update -g grunt-cli

• Updating Bower:

$ npm update -g bower

Cleaning NPM and Bower cache

NPM and Bower has a caching system for holding packages that you already installed. We found that often cleaning the cache solves some troubles this system creates.

• NPM Clean Cache:

$ npm cache clean

• Bower Clean Cache:

$ bower cache clean

Installation problems on Windows 8 / 8.1

Some of Mean.io dependencies uses node-gyp with supported Python version 2.7.x. So if you see an error related to node-gyp rebuild follow next steps:

1. install Python 2.7.x
2. install Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2012 Express
3. fire NPM update

$ npm update -g

Configuration

All configuration is specified in the config folder, through the env files, and is orchestrated through the meanio NPM module. Here you will need to specify your application name, database name, and hook up any social app keys if you want integration with Twitter, Facebook, GitHub, or Google.

Environmental Settings

There is a shared environment config: all.

• root - This the default root path for the application.
• port - DEPRECATED to http.port or https.port.
• http.port - This sets the default application port.
• https - These settings are for running HTTPS / SSL for a secure application.
  • port - This sets the default application port for HTTPS / SSL. If HTTPS is not used then is value is to be set to false which is the default setting. If HTTPS is to be used the standard HTTPS port is 443.
  • ssl.key - The path to public key.
  • ssl.cert - The path to certificate.

There are three environments provided by default: development, test, and production.

Each of these environments has the following configuration options:

• db - This is where you specify the MongoDB / Mongoose settings
  • url - This is the url/name of the MongoDB database to use, and is set by default to mean-dev for the development environment.
  • debug - Setting this option to true will log the output all Mongoose executed collection methods to your console. The default is set to true for the development environment.
  • options - These are the database options that will be passed directly to mongoose.connect in the production environment: [server, replset, user, pass, auth, mongos] (http://mongoosejs.com/docs/connections.html#options) or read [this] (http://mongodb.github.io/node-mongodb-native/driver-articles/mongoclient.html#mongoclient-connect-options) for more information.
• app.name - This is the name of your app or website, and can be different for each environment. You can tell which environment you are running by looking at the TITLE attribute that your app generates.
• Social OAuth Keys - Facebook, GitHub, Google, Twitter. You can specify your own social application keys here for each platform:
  • clientID
  • clientSecret
  • callbackURL
• emailFrom - This is the from email address displayed when sending an email.
• mailer - This is where you enter your email service provider, username and password.

To run with a different environment, just specify NODE_ENV as you call grunt:

$ NODE_ENV=test grunt

If you are using node instead of grunt, it is very similar:

$ NODE_ENV=test node server

To simply run tests

$ npm test

NOTE: Running Node.js applications in the production environment enables caching, which is disabled by default in all other environments.

Maintaining your own repository

After initializing a project, you'll see that the root directory of your project is already a git repository. MEAN uses git to download and update its own code. To handle its own operations, MEAN creates a remote called upstream. This way you can use git as you would in any other project.

To maintain your own public or private repository, add your repository as remote. See here for information on adding an existing project to GitHub.

git remote add origin <remote repository URL>
git push -u origin master

Getting Started

We pre-included an article example. Check out:

• The Model - Where we define our object schema.
• The Controller - Where we take care of our backend logic.
• NodeJS Routes - Where we define our REST service routes.
• AngularJs Routes - Where we define our CRUD routes.
• The AngularJs Service - Where we connect to our REST service.
• The AngularJs Controller - Where we take care of our frontend logic.
• The AngularJs Views Folder - Where we keep our CRUD views.

Heroku Quick Deployment

Before you start make sure you have the Heroku toolbelt installed and an accessible MongoDB instance - you can try MongoHQ which has an easy setup).

Add the db string to the production env in server/config/env/production.js.

git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial version"
heroku apps:create
heroku config:add NODE_ENV=production
heroku config:add BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/mbuchetics/heroku-buildpack-nodejs-grunt.git
git push heroku master
heroku config:set NODE_ENV=production

More Information

• Visit us at Linnovate.net.
• Visit our Ninja's Zone for extended support.

License

The MIT License