mdeceiver79/simplenodeserver

A simple node server using grunt to separate source clientside files from distribution/post processed clientside files.

Simple Server

Synopsis

This is a very basic web server which separates the minimised/post processed app.js, styles.css using gulp. The clientside of the website is developed in the /src folder and are transferred to the /webserver/dist folder from where they are served. There is also a very basic example of an express API.

Motivation

This was made as a convenient, easy to use framework to base a website upon. You can either use the provided gulp task to consolidate scripts in /src/scripts into app.js or you can work, more traditionally, by putting all of your scripts/files into the /src/static. You could even build your website in the /webserver/dist directory - if you do this DO NOT run gulp build! You will need to edit the gitignore file if you wish to version control the /webserver/dist directory.

Installation

You will need to have gulp and bower installed for this to work.

 npm install gulp -g
 npm install bower .g

Next you will need to install the node modules and bower components (serverside and clientside packages, modules and libraries)

 npm install
 bower install

You are now ready to run the website but first we need to build the website. We use

 gulp build

to transfer the clientside app (website) from the /src to the /webserver/dist. Now we start the server from the webserver directory

 cd webserver
 node server.js

Now go to localhost:8080 (might be configured to use a different port)

What's next?

Next you will want to edit the /src directory. Add a new file called myFirstScript.js to the /src/scripts directory. Open myFirstScript.js and add

 console.log("it's alive!");

Now run

 gulp build

to rebuild the website and restart the server. (use ctrl+c to stop the website server script) then use

 node server.js

Now if you open the browser console (f12 in chrome/chromium) and refresh your localhost:8080 webpage you will see a familiar message in the console.

Further steps include adding more pages (to the /src/static directory) or editing the api.

But What's After That????

You will probably want some kind of authentication for your website (such as passport) Consider using a clientside javascript framework (such as angularjs) Consider using something like less or sass for easier stylesheet editing

API Reference

There are 2 end points provided with this example server. /api/example/list - This will return an arbitrary array to demonstrate a basic api

/api/example/item/:item_id- This will return a single object to demonstrate the usage of express request parameters.

Tests

No tests currently

What about the future? (TODO)

I'd like to make tests. I'd like to provide webpack as an alternative to gulp I'd like to make a demonstration angular app.

License

MIT