This is a template application using Node.js, Express, EJS, Bootstrap and Nodemon. Almost all of this comes from John Schimmel and the ITP Dynamic Web Development class. I have simply added a few thing and made it my own so I can develop quickly.
To use, follow the getting started below. Very simple!
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Download this template repo and navigate into the code directory with Terminal.
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Run npm install to get all required libraries.
npm install
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A Git repository and Heroku app are required for this Example to work.
git init git add . git commit -am "init commit"
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Create Heroku app and add database
heroku create
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Rename the app to what you want
heroku apps:rename newname
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Add MongoLabs Starter MongoDB add on to your heroku app
heroku addons:add mongolab:starter
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Get Heroku MongoLab connection string into .env file
heroku config --shell | grep MONGOLAB_URI >> .env
Your connection string to MongoDB will be in your .env file now.
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Start server with foreman start.
foreman start
Foreman reads your .env file, populates the process.env object for use in your app.
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Open web browser to http://localhost:5000 to view the web app.
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Stop the web server press Command+C in the Terminal window.
To auto restart your development server after you make some changes to your code. Install Nodemon. Nodemon will watch your files and restart the server for you.
Install Nodemon. In Terminal type,
npm install -g nodemon
There are two possible ways to use Nodemon,
foreman run nodemon app.js
Or with the helper script
. devserver
The .nodemonignore file will ignore certain files and directories from being watched. By default and for example we're ignoring /public folder.
Libraries and frameworks are created for all programming languages to make complicated programming tasks more easier to program. A database library will create the connection to the database server, insert and query data and return a result that is easily used. A framework involves the same ideas of a library but it usually is larger in size and complexity - picking a framework is usually done at the beginning of development because it is often difficult to switch to another. Android, Arduino, OpenFrameworks, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails, Django and Processing are frameworks, each is a collection of libraries to interact with lower level code.
Libraries and frameworks are available to make your programming life easier - someone else has had similar tasks and requirements so they organized their code into a library and made it available to the community.
ExpressJS (http://expressjs.com/guide.html) is a popular framework for building web applications in NodeJS. ExpressJS's core is taken from the Connect framework.
Routing is how you direct the user's requested URL to retrieve the appropriate 'page' or save the submitted form. All routes execute functions, the callbacks should receive a request and response object from Express
app.get('/page1',function(request, response){ //your code goes here })
GET- a user requests a web page or resource
app.get('/about',function(request, response){
console.log("GET request for /about");
response.send("This is the about page.");
});
POST- a user submits a form
app.post("/the-form", function(request, response){
console.log("a user has request /the-form via POST");
//form processing code goes here....
//send message to user
response.send("okay, we'll process that right away.")
});