This template provides a starter project that implements best practices in coding, building and testing AngularJS applications using Material Design. Features include:
- A well-organized component hierarchy starting from
approot
. Components are implemented using directives (no dangling controllers). This provides a good architectural direction until Angular 2.0 becomes available. - Follows AngularJS style guidelines (e.g.
controller as
syntax). - Uses AngularUI Router for flexible routing and nested views.
- Uses Angular Material to implement an interface that conforms to Material Design.
- Provides logging and exception handling frameworks.
- Provides a Gulp based build system – code changes are reflected in the browser immediately.
- Uses Karma, Mocha and Chai for testing.
Visit our wiki for detailed concepts and useful recipes for extending the template.
- Install Node
- on OSX, install home brew and type
brew install node
- on Windows, use the installer available at nodejs.org
- On OSX you can alleviate the need to run as sudo by following John Papa's instructions
- on OSX, install home brew and type
- Open terminal
- Type
npm install -g node-inspector bower gulp
Clone this repo and run the content locally:
$ npm install
$ gulp serve-dev
npm install
will install the required node libraries undernode_modules
and then callbower install
which will install the required client-side libraries underbower_components
.gulp serve-dev
will serve up the Angular application in a browser window. It is designed for an efficient development process. As you make changes to the code, the browser will update to reflect the changes immediately.
When you are ready to build the application for production, run the following command:
$ gulp serve-build
This will build a production-ready package in the /build
folder.
The folder structure is somewhat simplified and flatter compared to John Papa's Gulp Patterns project. The description below includes reasons for some of my customizations.
/bower_components
/build
/node_modules
/src
/test
-
bower_components:
Bower components downloaded bybower install
(do not check in) -
build:
Production build (do not check in) -
node_modules:
Node.js modules downloaded bynpm install
(do not check in) -
src:
contains all the client source files including HTML, styles (in SASS format), JavaScript and images -
test:
contains client tests. This folder is intentionally kept separate from client source because I expect many different types of tests in this folder (unit, integration, acceptance). On real projects, the number of test files can easily exceed the number of source files, hence I like to keep the clutter away from the real source - just my preference!
/src
/components
/core
/framework
/images
/app.module.js
/app.scss
/index.html
The src
folder contains only the source for the AngularJS client application. It treats all 3 web technologies (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) as first class citizens and arranges them into logical modules. At the highest level you will find the main html, css (well, scss) and js files:
index.html
app.scss
app.module.js
Below this level you will find various folders that arrange the application's functionality into logical modules.
-
framework:
Container for reusable services such as logging, exception handling, routing, security, local storage etc. These services are expected to work out-of-the-box without any changes for most applications. The template provides sample implementations for the first three. (This folder is calledblocks
in the gulp-patterns project.) -
core:
Contains functionality that is shared across the application and will probably need customization for a specific application. This includes directives, filters and services and styles common to the entire application. -
components:
Contains all the components of the application. We recommend thinking of an Angular application as a tree of components, starting with theapp
component as the root of this tree. -
images:
Images used in the application.
-
gulp help
Displays all of the available gulp tasks.
-
gulp vet
Performs static code analysis on all javascript files. Runs jshint and jscs.
-
gulp vet --verbose
Displays all files affected and extended information about the code analysis.
-
gulp plato
Performs code analysis using plato on all javascript files. Plato generates a report in the reports folder.
-
gulp test
Runs all unit tests using karma runner, mocha, chai and sinon with phantomjs. Depends on vet task, for code analysis.
-
gulp autotest
Runs a watch to run all unit tests.
-
gulp clean
Remove all files from the build and temp folders
-
gulp clean-images
Remove all images from the build folder
-
gulp clean-code
Remove all javascript and html from the build folder
-
gulp clean-fonts
Remove all fonts from the build folder
-
gulp clean-styles
Remove all styles from the build folder
-
gulp fonts
Copy all fonts from source to the build folder
-
gulp images
Copy all images from source to the build folder
-
gulp styles
Compile less files to CSS, add vendor prefixes, and copy to the build folder
-
gulp templatecache
Create an Angular module that adds all HTML templates to Angular's $templateCache. This pre-fetches all HTML templates saving XHR calls for the HTML.
-
gulp templatecache --verbose
Displays all files affected by the task.
-
gulp serve-dev
Serves the development code and launches it in a browser. The goal of building for development is to do it as fast as possible, to keep development moving efficiently. This task serves all code from the source folders and compiles less to css in a temp folder.
-
gulp html
Optimize all javascript and styles, move to a build folder, and inject them into the new index.html
-
gulp build
Copies all fonts, copies images and runs
gulp html
to build the production code to the build folder.
-
gulp serve-build
Serve the optimized code from the build folder and launch it in a browser.
This template is heavily influenced by John Papa's AngularJS Style Guide and his Gulp Patterns project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank John for providing these excellent resources to make our jobs easier and more enjoyable.