While the project can still be used for reference, the reality is that it has aged and no longer reflects best practices. To make this clear, the project is now archived.

Node API Starter's Frontend (Archived)

Live App Demo: https://node-api-starter-angular-app.experiments.explabs.io
Live API: https://node-api-starter.experiments.explabs.io/v1/hello

An example application that uses node API starter.

This project has several purposes:

Serve as an example on how to consume the node API starter
Provide a boilerplate for Angular applications that are built around a dashboard
Serve as a reference for various implementations and concepts from project structure to CD with CircleCI

You can find the node API starter source code here https://github.com/feredean/node-api-starter

Requirements
- Quick start
- Fancy start
Getting started
Deployment
Project Structure
Build scripts
Testing
Dependencies
- production
- development
License

Requirements

There are two ways to go about handling requirements. You can either follow the quick start path where you dump all the dependencies in your system or you can go down the fancy setup that will give you more flexibility in the future by using nvm.

Quick start

Install Node.js
Install VS Code

Fancy start

Install Node Version Manager
Configure nvm Shell Integration (highly recommend setting up zsh together with oh my zsh). Once you set it up it will automatically change the node version if the project has a .nvmrc file.

Getting started

Set up the node API starter

# Get the latest snapshot
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/feredean/node-api-starter-angular-app.git <project_name>

# Change directory
cd <project_name>

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run (development mode) the API on port 9100
npm run watch

Navigate to http://localhost:4200 and you now have access to your APP

Deployment

The example in this project is built around the existence of a kubernetes cluster. You can easily change to your infrastructure of choice by changing the deploy step in .circleci/config.yml to pull the docker image wherever you need it.

  # pull the image from docker hub and deploy it to the k8s cluster
  deploy:
    docker:
      - image: feredean/circleci-kops:0.1.0
    environment:
      IMAGE_NAME: feredean/node-api-starter-angular-app
      KOPS_STATE_STORE: s3://k8s-explabs-io-state-store
    steps:
      - run:
          name: Deploy to k8s cluster
          command: |
            # Ensure AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY are set in the project's env vars
            kops export kubecfg --name k8s.explabs.io
            kubectl set image deploy/node-api-starter-angular-app node-api-starter-angular-app=$IMAGE_NAME:$CIRCLE_SHA1

Prerequisites

Kubernetes

Depending on your cloud provider of choice you can fairly quickly set up a managed, production-ready environment for deploying containerized applications.

Google's GKE
Amazon's EKS
Microsoft's AKS

This project is deployed on a cluster set up with kops on aws spot instances. If there is interest I plan on going more in depth on this subject and provide a walk-through.

Deploying to Kubernetes

You need to create the kubernetes deployment and service. To do this simply run the following:

kubectl create -f .kubernetes/deployment.yaml

If somehow a deadly bug has managed to make its way past the test suite and got deployed to production where it's wreaking havoc you need to run following command:

kubectl rollout undo deployment <your deployment name>

This will instantly roll back the deployment to the previous one.

CircleCI

To integrate with CircleCI:

Go to CircleCI and create an account
Link your project

Add the needed environment variables to run the test

# Used to connect to the kubernetes cluster
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

# Used for publishing the image
DOCKERHUB_PASS
DOCKERHUB_USERNAME

Make master branch a protected branch require ci/circleci: build check before merging from feature branches. Once a PR is merged into master CircleCI will automatically build and deploy the new version of the APP.

Project Structure

Name	Description
.circleci	Contains CircleCI settings for continuous deployment
.kubernetes	Contains kubernetes configuration for running the app on a cluster (auto-scaling included)
.vscode	Contains VS Code specific settings
dist	Contains the code you ship
node_modules	Contains all your npm dependencies
src/app	Contains the application code
src/app/core	The CoreModule. Loaded once in AppModule used to instantiate the app and load core functionality
src/app/shared	The SharedModule. Exports modules, directives and components and is used by multiple feature modules
src/environments	Contains environment specific settings used by angular to build the app
.editorconfig	Maintain coding styles consistent across various editors
.nvmrc	A file containing the node version used in the project automatically loaded by nvm
angular.json	Angular configuration
browserslist	This file is used by the build system to adjust CSS and JS output to support the specified browsers
Dockerfile	Used to build the docker image in the `dockerize` job in `.circleci/config.yml`
karma.conf.js	Used to configure karma test runner
package.json	File that contains npm dependencies as well as build scripts
tsconfig.app.json	Options used when working with code in the `app` folder
tsconfig.json	Base options that different config files will import
tsconfig.spec.json	Options used for the tests
tslint.json	TSLint options - on course to deprecation https://github.com/palantir/tslint#tslint

Build scripts

npm scripts can be found in package.json in the scripts section. They can call each other which means it's very easy to compose complex builds out of simple individual build scripts.

Npm Script	Description
`start`	Runs the application. Same as `watch`
`build`	Builds app for production
`watch`	Runs the application. Use this for development
`test`	Runs tests using karma test runner verbosely and generates a coverage report
`watch-test`	Runs tests in watch mode
`lint`	Runs TSLint on project files
`e2e`	Runs e2e tests
`check-deps`	Audits and upgrades (inside package.json run npm install to apply) dependencies to their latest stable version

Testing

While Karma is the default test runner for Angular, it is possible to configure the project to use another runner like jest

Running tests

To run the tests simply use npm test. If you want to refresh the tests on save use npm run watch-test.

Linting

This year Palantir has announced the deprecation of TSLint.

In order to avoid bifurcating the linting tool space for TypeScript, we therefore plan to deprecate TSLint and focus our efforts instead on improving ESLint’s TypeScript support.

Angular projects are still using TSLint.

VSCode Extensions

Dependencies

`production`

Package	Description
@angular/animations	Module used for animation
@angular/cdk	Angular Material component dev kit a set of tools that implement common interaction patterns
@angular/common	Implements basic Angular directives and pipes, such as NgIf, NgForOf, DecimalPipe, and so on
@angular/compiler	Angular compiler library
@angular/core	Implements Angular's core functionality, low-level services, and utilities
@angular/flex-layout	Angular Flex Layout provides a sophisticated layout API using Flexbox CSS + mediaQuery
@angular/forms	Implements a set of directives and providers to communicate with native DOM elements when building forms to capture user input
@angular/material	Material Design components for Angular
@angular/platform-browser	Supports execution of Angular apps on different supported browsers
@angular/platform-browser-dynamic	Library for using Angular in a web browser with JIT compilation
@angular/router	Implements the Angular Router service , which enables navigation from one view to the next as users perform application tasks
@auth0/angular-jwt	This library provides an HttpInterceptor which automatically attaches a JSON Web Token to HttpClient requests
lodash	General utility library
tslib	Runtime library for TypeScript helper functions
zone.js	Implements Zones for JavaScript

`development`

Package	Description
@angular-devkit/build-angular	Angular Webpack Build Facade
@angular/cli	Angular command line interface `ng`
@angular/compiler-cli	The compiler CLI for Node.js
@angular/language-service	Angular Language Service
@types	Dependencies in this folder are `.d.ts` files used to provide types
codelyzer	Linting for Angular applications, following the angular.io/styleguide
jasmine-core	BDD testing framework for JavaScript
jasmine-spec-reporter	Real time console spec reporter for jasmine testing framework.
karma	Test runner
karma-chrome-launcher	Karma plugin. Launcher for Chrome
karma-coverage-istanbul-reporter	Karma coverage reporter - uses istanbul
karma-jasmine	Karma plugin, adapter jasmine
karma-jasmine-html-reporter	Karma plugin, dynamically displays test results at debug.html
npm-check-updates	Upgrades package.json dependencies to the latest versions, ignoring specified version
protractor	Webdriver E2E test wrapper for Angular
ts-node	Typescript execution environment and REPL for node.js with source map support
tslint	Linter for Typescript
typescript	JavaScript compiler/type checker that boosts JavaScript productivity

If you're the type of person that likes to live life on the bleeding edge feel free to use npm run check-deps. Just remember that the typescript version needs to be compatible with angular.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

feredean / node-api-starter-angular-app