syserr/node-express-bootstrap-simple

A very simple example of how to incorporate Bootstrap into a Node.js / Express app

node-express-bootstrap-simple

This is about the simplest demonstration of Node.js/Express.js working with Bootstrap. This is a sister demo to my project sinatra-bootstrap-simple -- they do the exact same thing.

Simple:

• decreases dependencies
• shows a reader what is actually required

Included:

• package.json -- so you know the dependencies
• (Twitter) Bootstrap 3.3.5 - unpacked in public/(css,js,fonts)
• JQuery 1.11.3 that the Bootstrap examples used - unpacked in public

Note: I am not an expert. (yet)

It played well with Node v4.2.2 and NPM 2.14.7.

Starting from ground zero

On Linux I can do this as a non-root user (I'm sure OSX is similar):

wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v4.2.2/node-v4.2.2-linux-x64.tar.gz
tar -xzf node-v4.2.2-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd node-v4.2.2-linux-x64
export PATH=~/node-v4.2.2-linux-x64/bin:$PATH
git clone https://github.com/syserr/node-express-bootstrap-simple
cd node-express-bootstrap-simple
npm install
npm start

Wow, that's it?

Yes, Node.js/Express.js using Bootstrap in just a few minutes.

Thoughts

The documentation on using a layout in Express.js is sparse and all over the place. That was the most difficult part of this demo. I believe Express (proper) didn't have layouts until recently. Many different implementations by anyone that can make an npm, then a few tries at a blessed approach. So the latest and greatest works pretty well, but I found many many ways to do it wrong and depreciated before I found "the right way." This seems to be a problem in web development but Node seems particularly bad -- so many helper implementations trying to fill a void because frameworks are immature. I almost went with Koa framework for the demo, but some of the syntax wasn't appealing and didn't love the how layouts worked. Koa is probably better, but I wanted mainstream.