angular-seed — the seed for AngularJS apps

This project is modification of the seed project provided by the Angular team.

The seed contains a sample AngularJS application and is preconfigured to install the Angular framework and a bunch of development and testing tools for instant web development gratification.

The seed app doesn't do much, just shows how to wire two controllers and views together.

Getting Started

To get you started you can simply clone the angular-seed repository and install the dependencies:

Prerequisites

We also use a number of node.js tools to initialize and test angular-seed. You must have node.js and its package manager (npm) installed. You can get them from http://nodejs.org/.

Clone angular-seed

Clone the angular-seed repository using [git][git]:

git clone https://github.com/fabiotisci/angular-seed.git
cd angular-seed

If you just want to start a new project without the angular-seed commit history then you can do:

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/fabiotisci/angular-seed.git <your-project-name>

The depth=1 tells git to only pull down one commit worth of historical data.

Install Dependencies

We have two kinds of dependencies in this project: tools and angular framework code. The tools help us manage and test the application.

• We get the tools we depend upon via npm, the [node package manager][npm].
• We get the angular code via bower, a [client-side code package manager][bower].

We have preconfigured npm to automatically run bower so we can simply do:

npm install

Behind the scenes this will also call bower install. You should find that you have two new folders in your project.

• node_modules - contains the npm packages for the tools we need
• app/bower_components - contains the angular framework files

Note that the bower_components folder would normally be installed in the root folder but angular-seed changes this location through the .bowerrc file. Putting it in the app folder makes it easier to serve the files by a webserver.

Run the Application

We have preconfigured the project with a simple development web server. The simplest way to start this server is:

npm start

Now browse to the app at http://localhost:8000/.

Directory Layout

app/                    --> all of the source files for the application
  app.css               --> default stylesheet
  app/           --> all app specific modules
      app.component.js           --> main app component
      app.controller.js          --> controller for the main app component
      app.tpl.html               --> template for app component
  component1/                    --> the component1 view template and logic
    component1.tpl.html          --> the partial template
    component1.component.js      --> the component file
    component1.controller.js     --> the controller logic
  main/                          --> the main view template and logic
    main.tpl.html                --> the partial template
    main.controller.js           --> the controller logic
    main.component.js            --> the component file
  app.js                --> main application module
  index.html            --> app layout file (the main html template file of the app)
karma.conf.js         --> config file for running unit tests with Karma
e2e-tests/            --> end-to-end tests
  protractor-conf.js    --> Protractor config file
  scenarios.js          --> end-to-end scenarios to be run by Protractor

Testing

There are two kinds of tests in the angular-seed application: Unit tests and End to End tests.

Running Unit Tests

The angular-seed app comes preconfigured with unit tests. These are written in [Jasmine][jasmine], which we run with the [Karma Test Runner][karma]. We provide a Karma configuration file to run them.

• the configuration is found at karma.conf.js
• the unit tests are found next to the code they are testing and are named as ..._test.js.

The easiest way to run the unit tests is to use the supplied npm script:

npm test

This script will start the Karma test runner to execute the unit tests. Moreover, Karma will sit and watch the source and test files for changes and then re-run the tests whenever any of them change. This is the recommended strategy; if your unit tests are being run every time you save a file then you receive instant feedback on any changes that break the expected code functionality.

You can also ask Karma to do a single run of the tests and then exit. This is useful if you want to check that a particular version of the code is operating as expected. The project contains a predefined script to do this:

npm run test-single-run

End to end testing

The angular-seed app comes with end-to-end tests, again written in [Jasmine][jasmine]. These tests are run with the [Protractor][protractor] End-to-End test runner. It uses native events and has special features for Angular applications.

• the configuration is found at e2e-tests/protractor-conf.js
• the end-to-end tests are found in e2e-tests/scenarios.js

Protractor simulates interaction with our web app and verifies that the application responds correctly. Therefore, our web server needs to be serving up the application, so that Protractor can interact with it.

npm start

In addition, since Protractor is built upon WebDriver we need to install this. The angular-seed project comes with a predefined script to do this:

npm run update-webdriver

This will download and install the latest version of the stand-alone WebDriver tool.

Once you have ensured that the development web server hosting our application is up and running and WebDriver is updated, you can run the end-to-end tests using the supplied npm script:

npm run protractor

This script will execute the end-to-end tests against the application being hosted on the development server.

Updating Angular

Previously we recommended that you merge in changes to angular-seed into your own fork of the project. Now that the angular framework library code and tools are acquired through package managers (npm and bower) you can use these tools instead to update the dependencies.

You can update the tool dependencies by running:

npm update

This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the package.json file.

You can update the Angular dependencies by running:

bower update

This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the bower.json file.

Serving the Application Files

While angular is client-side-only technology and it's possible to create angular webapps that don't require a backend server at all, we recommend serving the project files using a local webserver during development to avoid issues with security restrictions (sandbox) in browsers. The sandbox implementation varies between browsers, but quite often prevents things like cookies, xhr, etc to function properly when an html page is opened via file:// scheme instead of http://.

Running the App during Development

The angular-seed project comes preconfigured with a local development webserver. It is a node.js tool called [lite-server]. You can start this webserver with npm start.

Running the App in Production

This really depends on how complex your app is and the overall infrastructure of your system, but the general rule is that all you need in production are all the files under the app/ directory. Everything else should be omitted.

Angular apps are really just a bunch of static html, css and js files that just need to be hosted somewhere they can be accessed by browsers.

If your Angular app is talking to the backend server via xhr or other means, you need to figure out what is the best way to host the static files to comply with the same origin policy if applicable. Usually this is done by hosting the files by the backend server or through reverse-proxying the backend server(s) and webserver(s).