This is an empty template for you to start off your web applicatoin. All the stuff used in this project are chosen carefully with an outstanding exprience of building webb-apps.
This template is ready to run on Heroku! You can find a demo running on Heroku here: http://node-web-template.herokuapp.com/
###Tech Stack Included
- Express as web framework | http://expressjs.com
- CoffeeScript instead of JavaScript | http://coffeescript.org
- Dust.js as templating language (LinkedIn fork) | http://linkedin.github.io/dustjs
- LESS in support of CSS | http://www.lesscss.org
- Backbone.js as client-side MVC | http://backbonejs.org
- CoffeeLint as style checker | http://www.coffeelint.org
- MongoDB as database (obviously) | http://www.mongodb.org
- Moongoose as object modelling for MongoDB | http://mongoosejs.com
- Konfig as config manager and parser | https://github.com/vngrs/konfig/
###What you will find inside
- One template to rule them all: Use one template for front/back end
- SEO friendly Backbone.js: First page rendering happens on the server side
- Pretty fast and async rendering of pages, thanks to Dust.js
- CoffeeScript and LESS is already in place
- Test ready: various sample tests are there for you
- Asset pipelining
- Ready to run on Heroku straight away (if MongoDB available)
- A simple structure for Heroku Scheduled Jobs
- Sample models and schema for Moongoose
- and more...
##Why Dust.js To be able to answer 'Why', we should answer 'What is Dust.JS'. Dust.JS is a JavaScript templating engine. It is designed to provide a clean separation between presentation and logic without sacrificing ease of use.
Dust templates are compiled into JavaScript and will work at both browser-side and server-side. In our case, this enables us to use same template file for generating pages at server-side and Backbone powered browser-side. You should be asking yourself: 'Why I need this?". The answer is straight forward:
- Same template file for server and browser side.
- One file to maintain, fix and make changes.
####Why we generate templates at server-side We use Backbone, so why we want to render pages at server-side? First of all we only render first page loads at the server. Since we want a SEO-friendly website, we need first page loads generated by server-side so they will be avaible for web spiders (which does not execute JavaScript). Backbone comes into play after first page load. When user clicks a link after first page load, next page is rendered with JavaScript using Backbone.
Why not a Phantom.JS like solutions for this? This kind of solution means you use headless-browser or libraries to render your page/JS as an user, and then serve it's rendered output. This has some disadvantages:
- Adds extra software layer and complexity
- Hard to inspect problems
- These solutions provided for testing needs
Dust.JS among other templating engines There are lots of templating engines, and some of them are great! But the reasons why we chose are pretty solid, these are:
- Performance
- Features
- Flexibility
- Logic-less
- Easy to use
- Good documentation
- And more (you can find more in the following readings)
To get more familiar about the choice of Dust.JS, please have a look at these readings: