Express Backbone Boilerplate

A small sample app built using Express and Backbone plus a few friends. I've used it as the basis for a few bigger projects, so hope it can help others in this regard too.

Dependencies

Ensure the following are installed:

• Node.js
• npm
• PhantomJS
• Pygments
• Compass

Install the global dependencies:

$ npm install -g grunt-cli karma istanbul node-inspector bower

Change to your project directory then install the local dependencies:

$ npm install; bower install

Client

• RequireJS is used for file and module loading
• Backbone.js is the client-side MVC framework
• Handlebars is used for client-side templating
• Compass is used for CSS authoring

To start using default options:

$ grunt start

Can be accessed via http://127.0.0.1:3000/. Node Inspector will also be available via http://0.0.0.0:8080/debug?port=5858.

Once started, the app will also:

• Watch the server source files, and restart the Node server if any changes are made
• Watch the SASS files, and recompile the dev CSS if any changes are made
• Watch the relevant JS files, and run the relevant JSHint tasks if any changes are made

Unit tests

Client

• Jasmine is used for testing the JS
• The Jasmine SpecRunner.html is automatically generated via grunt
• Karma is used to run the tests against various browsers, as well as providing code coverage via Istanbul

Tests can be run in the browser via http://127.0.0.1:3000/test.

To run tests only:

$ grunt client:test

To run tests with coverage:

$ grunt client:cover

Coverage information is output to ./coverage/client.

Server

• Mocha and expect.js are used for testing the Node server JS
• Istanbul is used to run the tests and provide code coverage

To run tests only:

$ grunt server:test

To run tests with coverage:

$ grunt server:coverage

Coverage information is output to ./coverage/server.

Docs

• Docker is used to generate the documentation.

To generate:

$ grunt docs

Can be accessed via http://localhost:3000/docs.

Distribution

• Uses the RequireJS optimiser to compress the JS
• Rewrites the index.html file to only include the one script

To generate:

$ grunt dist

Thanks

• @andrewpmckenzie, whose node-jasmine-dom was a big inspiration for this project
• @smozely, for the scaffolding and eventMediator suggestions
• @timsnadden, for showing me some new npm modules and Backbone helpers
• @appleYaks, whose grunt-express-workflow I leaned heavily on when configuring Istanbul and Karma