AngularJS + Express Full Stack Generator
A generator for AngularJS, integrated with an Express server.js
for full stack development.
Featuring:
- Express server integrated with grunt tasks
- Livereload of client and server files
- Easy deployment workflow.
- Optional mongoDB integration
- NEW Support for jade templates
Based on generator-angular
Usage
Install generator-angular-fullstack
:
npm install -g generator-angular-fullstack
Make a new directory, and cd
into it:
mkdir my-new-project && cd $_
Run yo angular-fullstack
, optionally passing an app name:
yo angular-fullstack [app-name]
Express
Launch your express server in development mode.
grunt serve
Launch your express server in production mode, uses the minified/optimized production app folder.
grunt serve:dist
Livereload
grunt serve
will watch client files in app/
, and server files inside lib/
, restarting the Express server when a change is detected.
Deployment
While deployment should be easy enough with the grunt dist
build, we provide an extremely simplifed deployment process for heroku.
yo angular-fullstack:deploy heroku
for generating a deployment ready folder for heroku.com from your project files.
Create and Deploy an app in 4 steps
-
mkdir foo && cd foo
-
yo angular-fullstack
-
yo angular-fullstack:deploy heroku
-
cd heroku && git push heroku master
-
Optional (if using mongoDB)
heroku addons:add mongohq
That's it! Your app should be live and shareable. Type heroku open
to view it.
Generators
Available generators:
- angular-fullstack (aka angular-fullstack:app)
- angular-fullstack:controller
- angular-fullstack:directive
- angular-fullstack:filter
- angular-fullstack:route
- angular-fullstack:service
- angular-fullstack:provider
- angular-fullstack:factory
- angular-fullstack:value
- angular-fullstack:constant
- angular-fullstack:decorator
- angular-fullstack:view
- angular-fullstack:deploy
Note: Generators are to be run from the root directory of your app.
App
Sets up a new AngularJS app, generating all the boilerplate you need to get started. The app generator also optionally installs Twitter Bootstrap and additional AngularJS modules, such as angular-resource (installed by default).
Example:
yo angular-fullstack
Deploy
Initalizes a heroku app and generates a heroku
folder which is ready to push to heroku.
Example:
yo angular-fullstack:deploy heroku
Route
Generates a controller and view, and configures a route in app/scripts/app.js
connecting them.
Example:
yo angular-fullstack:route myroute
Produces app/scripts/controllers/myroute.js
:
angular;
Produces app/views/myroute.html
:
This is the myroute view
Controller
Generates a controller in app/scripts/controllers
.
Example:
yo angular-fullstack:controller user
Produces app/scripts/controllers/user.js
:
angular;
Directive
Generates a directive in app/scripts/directives
.
Example:
yo angular-fullstack:directive myDirective
Produces app/scripts/directives/myDirective.js
:
angular;
Filter
Generates a filter in app/scripts/filters
.
Example:
yo angular-fullstack:filter myFilter
Produces app/scripts/filters/myFilter.js
:
angular;
View
Generates an HTML view file in app/views
.
Example:
yo angular-fullstack:view user
Produces app/views/user.html
:
This is the user view
Service
Generates an AngularJS service.
Example:
yo angular:service myService
Produces app/scripts/services/myService.js
:
angular;
You can also do yo angular-fullstack:factory
, yo angular-fullstack:provider
, yo angular-fullstack:value
, and yo angular-fullstack:constant
for other types of services.
Decorator
Generates an AngularJS service decorator.
Example:
yo angular-fullstack:decorator serviceName
Produces app/scripts/decorators/serviceNameDecorator.js
:
angular;
Options
In general, these options can be applied to any generator, though they only affect generators that produce scripts.
Jade
For generators that output views, the --jade
option will output Jade instead of HTML.
For example:
yo angular-fullstack --jade
Changes the rendering engine from EJS to Jade, and generates your views as jade files instead of HTML.
Assets that will be minified or compressed such as scripts, styles, and images, must still use normal html tags so they can be picked up by grunt-usemin and compressed for production builds.
CoffeeScript
For generators that output scripts, the --coffee
option will output CoffeeScript instead of JavaScript.
For example:
yo angular-fullstack:controller user --coffee
Produces app/scripts/controller/user.coffee
:
angularmodule'myMod' controller 'UserCtrl'
A project can mix CoffeScript and JavaScript files.
To output JavaScript files, even if CoffeeScript files exist (the default is to output CoffeeScript files if
the generator finds any in the project), use --coffee=false
.
Minification Safe
By default, generators produce unannotated code. Without annotations, AngularJS's DI system will break when minified. Typically, these annotations that make minification safe are added automatically at build-time, after application files are concatenated, but before they are minified. By providing the --minsafe
option, the code generated will out-of-the-box be ready for minification. The trade-off is between amount of boilerplate, and build process complexity.
Example
yo angular-fullstack:controller user --minsafe
Produces app/controller/user.js
:
angular;
Background
Unannotated:
angular;
Annotated:
angular;
The annotations are important because minified code will rename variables, making it impossible for AngularJS to infer module names based solely on function parameters.
The recommended build process uses ngmin
, a tool that automatically adds these annotations. However, if you'd rather not use ngmin
, you have to add these annotations manually yourself.
Add to Index
By default, new scripts are added to the index.html file. However, this may not always be suitable. Some use cases:
- Manually added to the file
- Auto-added by a 3rd party plugin
- Using this generator as a subgenerator
To skip adding them to the index, pass in the skip-add argument:
yo angular-fullstack:service serviceName --skip-add
Bower Components
The following packages are always installed by the app generator:
- angular
- angular-mocks
- angular-scenario
The following additional modules are available as components on bower, and installable via bower install
:
- angular-cookies
- angular-loader
- angular-resource
- angular-sanitize
All of these can be updated with bower update
as new versions of AngularJS are released.
Configuration
Yeoman generated projects can be further tweaked according to your needs by modifying project files appropriately.
Output
You can change the app
directory by adding a appPath
property to bower.json
. For instance, if you wanted to easily integrate with Express.js, you could add the following:
This will cause Yeoman-generated client-side files to be placed in public
.
Testing
Running grunt test
will run the unit tests with karma.
Contribute
See the contributing docs
When submitting an issue, please follow the guidelines. Especially important is to make sure Yeoman is up-to-date, and providing the command or commands that cause the issue.
When submitting a PR, make sure that the commit messages match the AngularJS conventions.
When submitting a bugfix, write a test that exposes the bug and fails before applying your fix. Submit the test alongside the fix.
When submitting a new feature, add tests that cover the feature.