AuNEX.JS

AuNEX.JS is a project that takes the foundation created by MEAN.JS and explores the feasibility of several new major concepts that have occurred in the web development world since the dawn of the MEAN stack.

AuNEX is a full-stack JavaScript open-source solution, which provides a solid starting point for Aurelia, Express, Node.js and Polyglot Persistence based applications. The idea is to solve the common issues with connecting those frameworks, build a robust framework to support daily development needs, and help developers use better practices while working with popular JavaScript components.

Motivation

MEAN.JS created an excellent starting point for modern SPA's. Most of the principles laid down by the project are still valid however, several trends are developing that diverge from the intent of MEAN.JS enough to warrant an independent project.

Aurelia

The biggest breaking change is the use of Aurelia as a front end Framework. Trying to pick a winner of the front end framework battles is a fools errand however the principles stated by the Aurelia team seem to be the most solid expression of a stable future I've seen. Therefore the first major goal of AuNEX is to replace Angular 1.0 with Aurelia.

Polyglot Persistence

The other major change I want to pursue is Polyglot Persistence. When the MEAN stack was first proposed, MongoDB was becoming a fairly standardized NoSQL solution for startup SPA's. The experience of several large sites has shown that scalability is best achieved by storing data in a backend that best matches the structure of the data. This is where the 'X' in AuNEX comes in. Projects have a need to utilize many data persistence backends and the application has to keep them integrated. Therefore the second major goal of the project is to demonstrate integration of multiple data persitence solutions including MongoDB, neo4j, Cassandra, RDMS, Redis and the list goes on.

Webpack

Webpack is a fantastic module bundler and fundamentally changes the way file dependencies are managed. Much of the asset management code from MEAN.JS will be replaced by Webpack.

Other Concepts

There are a number of other concepts that AuNEX will set out to explore.

API first

API First Development places emphasis on developing a strong contract between the backend and front-end as the first step to developing a site. A few frameworks have sprung up to support this including Swagger, api blueprint, Mashape, Apiary etc. An API first strategy will be taken for AuNEX

Code Documentation

AuNEX will implement auto-generated code documentation with jsdoc. This is perhaps a bit controversial as many projects have moved away from code documentation however I think a strong argument can be made for maintaining the docs such that made my Tom MacWright.

App Management

Every site needs a solid management foundation. This should include things like:

1. User Management
2. Content Management
3. Site Analytics
4. Project Management
5. Server Management
6. API Management
7. Documentation
8. Log Management
9. Settings Management
10. Style Guidelines
11. etc.

AuNEX will implement a framework to support this.

Standard Components

The intent of MEAN.JS was to show integration of frameworks. It included a few standard site components such as user sign-up, articles etc as examples. These items are repetitive, time consuming and fairly structurally similar between sites. The project will attempt to extract these as separately loadable plugins.

Before You Begin

Before you begin we recommend you read about the basic building blocks that assemble an AuNEX.JS application:

• Aurelia - A good first step is to go through the Aurelia documentation and attempt to build their example projects.
• Node.js - Start by going through Node.js Official Website and this StackOverflow Thread, which should get you going with the Node.js platform in no time.
• Express - The best way to understand express is through its Official Website, which has a Getting Started guide, as well as an ExpressJS guide for general express topics. You can also go through this StackOverflow Thread for more resources.
• Persistence - As a minimum you should understand modern NoSQL databases. AuNEX will implement MongoDB so this is a good place to get started with the concept of NoSQL however you should expand your knowledge of the various alternatives available.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have installed all of the following prerequisites on your development machine:

• Git - Download & Install Git. OSX and Linux machines typically have this already installed.
• Node.js - Download & Install Node.js and the npm package manager. If you encounter any problems, you can also use this GitHub Gist to install Node.js.
  • Node v5 IS NOT SUPPORTED AT THIS TIME!
• MongoDB - Download & Install MongoDB, and make sure it's running on the default port (27017).
• Ruby - Download & Install Ruby
• JSPM - Ensure that jspm is installed. If you need to install it, use the following command:

$ npm install -g jspm

• WebPack - You're going to use the Webpack Module Bundler to manage your front-end packages and your build process. Make sure you've installed Node.js and npm first, then install webpack globally using npm:

$ npm install -g webpack

• Sass - You're going to use Sass to compile CSS during your grunt task. Make sure you have ruby installed, and then install Sass using gem install:

$ gem install sass

Downloading AuNEX.JS

There are several ways you can get the AuNEX.JS boilerplate:

Cloning The GitHub Repository

The recommended way to get AuNEX.js is to use git to directly clone the AuNEX.JS repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/aunexjs/aunex.git aunexjs

This will clone the latest version of the AuNEX.JS repository to a aunexjs folder.

Downloading The Repository Zip File

Another way to use the AuNEX.JS boilerplate is to download a zip copy from the [master branch on GitHub](https://github .com/aunexjs/aunex/archive/master.zip). You can also do this using the wget command:

$ wget https://github.com/aunexjs/aunex/archive/master.zip -O aunexjs.zip; unzip aunexjs.zip; rm aunexjs.zip

Don't forget to rename aunex-master after your project name.

Quick Install

Once you've downloaded the boilerplate and installed all the prerequisites, you're just a few steps away from starting to develop your AuNEX application.

The first thing you should do is install the Node.js dependencies. The boilerplate comes pre-bundled with a package.json file that contains the list of modules you need to start your application. To learn more about the modules installed visit the npm & Package.json section.

To install Node.js dependencies you're going to use npm again. In the application folder run this in the command-line:

$ npm install

This command does a few things:

• First it will install the dependencies needed for the application to run.
• If you're running in a development environment, it will then also install development dependencies needed for testing and running your application.
• Finally, when the install process is over, npm will initiate a bower install command to install all the front-end modules needed for the application

Running Your Application

After the install process is over, you'll be able to run your application using Grunt, just run grunt default task:

$ webpack watch

Your application should run on port 3000 with the development environment configuration, so in your browser just go to http://localhost:3000

That's it! Your application should be running. To proceed with your development, check the other sections in this documentation. If you encounter any problems, try the Troubleshooting section.

• explore config/env/development.js for development environment configuration options

Running in Production mode

To run your application with production environment configuration, execute grunt as follows:

$ webpack production

• explore config/env/production.js for production environment configuration options

Running with User Seed

To have default account(s) seeded at runtime:

In Development:

MONGO_SEED=true grunt

It will try to seed the users 'user' and 'admin'. If one of the user already exists, it will display an error message on the console. Just grab the passwords from the console.

In Production:

MONGO_SEED=true grunt prod

This will seed the admin user one time if the user does not already exist. You have to copy the password from the console and save it.

Running with TLS (SSL)

Application will start by default with secure configuration (SSL mode) turned on and listen on port 8443. To run your application in a secure manner you'll need to use OpenSSL and generate a set of self-signed certificates. Unix-based users can use the following command:

$ sh ./scripts/generate-ssl-certs.sh

Windows users can follow instructions found here. After you've generated the key and certificate, place them in the config/sslcerts folder.

Finally, execute grunt's prod task grunt prod

• enable/disable SSL mode in production environment change the secure option in config/env/production.js

Testing Your Application

You can run the full test suite included with MEAN.JS with the test task:

$ webpack test

This will run both the server-side tests (located in the app/tests/ directory) and the client-side tests (located in the public/modules/*/tests/).

To execute only the server tests, run the test:server task:

$ webpack test:server

And to run only the client tests, run the test:client task:

$ webpack test:client

To execute only the tests in a single file:

$tbd

Running your application with Gulp

After the install process, you can easily run your project with:

$ gulp

or

$ gulp default

The server is now running on http://localhost:3000 if you are using the default settings.

Running Gulp Development Environment

Start the development environment with:

$ gulp dev

Running in Production mode

To run your application with production environment configuration, execute gulp as follows:

$ gulp prod

Testing Your Application with Gulp

Using the full test suite included with MEAN.JS with the test task:

Run all tests

$ gulp test

Run server tests

gulp test:server

Run client tests

gulp test:client

Run e2e tests

gulp test:e2e

Development and deployment With Docker

• Install Docker

• Install Compose

• Local development and testing with compose:

$ docker-compose up

• Local development and testing with just Docker:

$ docker build -t mean .
$ docker run -p 27017:27017 -d --name db mongo
$ docker run -p 3000:3000 --link db:db_1 mean
$

• To enable live reload, forward port 35729 and mount /app and /public as volumes:

$ docker run -p 3000:3000 -p 35729:35729 -v /Users/mdl/workspace/mean-stack/mean/public:/home/mean/public -v /Users/mdl/workspace/mean-stack/mean/app:/home/mean/app --link db:db_1 mean

Contributing

We welcome pull requests from the community! Just be sure to read the contributing doc to get started.

Deploying To Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry is an open source platform-as-a-service (PaaS). The AuNEXJS project can easily be deployed to any Cloud Foundry instance. The easiest way to deploy the AuNEXJS project to Cloud Foundry is to use a public hosted instance. The two most popular instances are Pivotal Web Services and IBM Bluemix. Both provide free trials and support pay-as-you-go models for hosting applications in the cloud. After you have an account follow the below steps to deploy AuNEXJS.

• Install the Cloud Foundry command line tools.
• Now you need to log into Cloud Foundry from the Cloud Foundry command line.
  • If you are using Pivotal Web Services run $ cf login -a api.run.pivotal.io.
  • If you are using IBM Bluemix run $ cf login -a api.ng.bluemix.net.
• Create a Mongo DB service.

• • If you are using Pivotal Web Services run $ cf create-service mongolab sandbox mean-mongo
• • If you are using IBM Bluemix run $ cf create-service mongodb 100 mean-mongo

• Clone the GitHub repo for MEANJS if you have not already done so
  • $ git clone https://github.com/meanjs/mean.git && cd mean
• Run $ npm install
• Run the Grunt Build task to build the optimized JavaScript and CSS files
  • $ grunt build
• Deploy MEANJS to Cloud Foundry
  • $ cf push

After cf push completes you will see the URL to your running MEANJS application (your URL will be different).

requested state: started
instances: 1/1
usage: 128M x 1 instances
urls: mean-humbler-frappa.mybluemix.net

Open your browser and go to that URL and your should see your MEANJS app running!

Deploying AuNEXJS To IBM Bluemix

IBM Bluemix is a Cloud Foundry based PaaS. By clicking the button below you can signup for Bluemix and deploy a working copy of AuNEXJS to the cloud without having to do the steps above.

After the deployment is finished you will be left with a copy of the AuNEXJS code in your own private Git repo in Bluemix complete with a pre-configured build and deploy pipeline. Just clone the Git repo, make your changes, and commit them back. Once your changes are committed, the build and deploy pipeline will run automatically deploying your changes to Bluemix.

Credits

Inspired by the great work of the MEAN.JS team

License

(The MIT License)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.