Grunt-Webpack-Starterkit

With all the power and flexibility of frameworks and task managers, there also comes a lot of boilerplate. This starterkit contains Express, Dust, Socket io, Grunt, Webpack, Babel, and React. I will not cover how to use these dependencies since each of them have thorough documentation, but I will show you how this starter kit uses them, and how you can get your server up-and-running in minutes.

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/patrickroberts/grunt-webpack-starterkit.git
$ cd grunt-webpack-starter-kit
$ npm install
$ grunt develop

This command runs the server in development mode which, thanks to the power of Grunt, offers some great conveniences:

Any saved changes to client files in the src/ folder automatically trigger Webpack to transpile the changes into client/, meaning that only a page refresh is required to see the results of your edits immediately.
Any saved changes to the server files in the server/ folder or app.js file automatically trigger the node process to terminate and restart, allowing you to see the server-side changes immediately.

Layout

The starter kit contains 5 folders (not including the dependencies):

client/ - the transpiled, browser-compliant JS and CSS. Do not edit this folder, it is autogenerated by grunt build and all your changes will be overwritten.
server/ - the server files require'd by app.js.
src/ - the ES6/7/JSX client files. The entry point is src/app.jsx, as specified by webpack.config.js.
tasks/ - the Grunt hook definitions, including the processes for watch and Webpack.
views/ - the Dust template files are located here.

Predefined tasks

$ grunt develop # runs the server in development mode
$ grunt test # runs tests (this task has been left undefined)
$ grunt # runs the server normally
$ grunt build # generates the transpiled client files

Production

After the client bundle has been generated, none of the devDependencies are needed to run the server. In order to run the server in production mode, you must first generate the optimized Webpack bundle by running:

$ NODE_ENV=production grunt build

Then push your server and run the following remotely:

$ node app

Customization

This starter kit leaves it to you to decide on any database, though it is recommended to place your schema and logic in server/ so that Grunt can restart the server whenever changes are made in development mode. If that is not suitable then feel free to add your chosen folder name to tasks/config/supervisor.js.

You may also use custom CSS, LESS, or SASS. All are supported options by the Webpack configuration of this starter kit. It is recommended to install them as npm modules or to place them in src/. If you have a LESS file located at src/styles/app.less for example, just add this line to src/app.jsx:

require('./styles/app.less');

Options

For scaling Socket io, you may specify a remote Redis url via process.env.REDIS_URL. Otherwise, be aware that any Socket io state in memory might cause issues when scaling.

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.

patrickroberts / grunt-webpack-starterkit