# angular-ui-seed — the seed for AngularJS apps This project seed is an application skeleton for a typical [AngularJS](http://angularjs.org/) web app. You can use it to quickly bootstrap your angular webapp projects and dev environment for these projects. It uses angular [ui-router](https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router) to create multiple named views as well as nested views. 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-ui-seed repository and install the dependencies: ### Prerequisites You need git to clone the angular-ui-seed repository. You can get it from [http://git-scm.com/](http://git-scm.com/). We also use a number of node.js tools to initialize and test angular-ui-seed. You must have node.js and its package manager (npm) installed. You can get them from [http://nodejs.org/](http://nodejs.org/). ### Clone angular-ui-seed Clone the angular-ui-seed repository using [git][git]: ``` git clone https://github.com/dokko1230/angular-ui-seed.git cd angular-ui-seed ``` ### 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-ui-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/app/index.html`. ## Directory Layout app/ --> all of the files to be used in production css/ --> css files app.css --> default stylesheet img/ --> image files index.html --> app layout file (the main html template file of the app) js/ --> javascript files core/ --> core files controllers/ --> core controllers AppCtrl.js NavbarCtrl.js directives/ --> core directives VersionDirective.js filters/ --> core filters VersionFilter.js services/ --> core services VersionService.js templates/ --> core templates 404.tpl.html main.tpl.html navbar.tpl.html state.js --> core state main/ --> main files controllers/ --> main controllers AboutCtrl.js ContactCtrl.js HomeCtrl.js templates/ --> main templates home.tpl.html about.tpl.html contact.tpl.html state.js --> main state app.js --> application test/ --> test config and source files protractor-conf.js --> config file for running e2e tests with Protractor e2e/ --> end-to-end specs scenarios.js karma.conf.js --> config file for running unit tests with Karma unit/ --> unit level specs/tests controllersSpec.js --> specs for controllers directivessSpec.js --> specs for directives filtersSpec.js --> specs for filters servicesSpec.js --> specs for services ## Testing There are two kinds of tests in the angular-ui-seed application: Unit tests and End to End tests. ### Running Unit Tests The angular-ui-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 `test/karma.conf.js` * the unit tests are found in `test/unit/`. 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-ui-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 `test/protractor-conf.js` * the end-to-end tests are found in `test/e2e/` 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-ui-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-ui-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-ui-seed project comes preconfigured with a local development webserver. It is a node.js tool called [http-server][http-server]. You can start this webserver with `npm start` but you may choose to install the tool globally: ``` sudo npm install -g http-server ``` Then you can start your own development web server to serve static files from a folder by running: ``` http-server ``` Alternatively, you can choose to configure your own webserver, such as apache or nginx. Just configure your server to serve the files under the `app/` directory. ### Running the App in Production This really depends on how complex is your app 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). ## Continuous Integration ### Travis CI [Travis CI][travis] is a continuous integration service, which can monitor GitHub for new commits to your repository and execute scripts such as building the app or running tests. The angular-ui-seed project contains a Travis configuration file, `.travis.yml`, which will cause Travis to run your tests when you push to GitHub. You will need to enable the integration between Travis and GitHub. See the Travis website for more instruction on how to do this. ### CloudBees CloudBees have provided a CI/deployment setup: If you run this, you will get a cloned version of this repo to start working on in a private git repo, along with a CI service (in Jenkins) hosted that will run unit and end to end tests in both Firefox and Chrome. ## Contact For more information on AngularJS please check out http://angularjs.org/ [git]: http://git-scm.com/ [bower]: http://bower.io [npm]: https://www.npmjs.org/ [node]: http://nodejs.org [protractor]: https://github.com/angular/protractor [jasmine]: http://pivotal.github.com/jasmine/ [karma]: http://karma-runner.github.io [travis]: https://travis-ci.org/ [http-server]: https://github.com/nodeapps/http-server