Develop Reference

What is the use for the special "public" folder in a Meteor app?

I'm currently using Meteor and trying to learn more about the framework. In the documentation about special directories the following is said about the public/ special directory:
All files inside a top-level directory called public/ are served as-is to the client. When referencing these assets, do not include public/ in the URL, write the URL as if they were all in the top level. For example, reference public/bg.png as <img src='/bg.png' />. This is the best place for favicon.ico, robots.txt, and similar files.
My question is: since I refer to files inside of public/ directory as if they were located in the root folder of my application, what's the different between putting the files in the public/ folder and in the root folder? Or is it just for organization sake?
Also the documentation I quoted above makes some examples using assets (some pngs and favicon.ico) and no JavaScript or HTML files. Am I able to put some JavaScript code in there and then import them in another file by referencing as if this code was located in the root of my app? Or is the public/ directory somewhat made only for assets?
I failed to find any docs that explains what is done to files inside this directory in detail (I only found what I quoted above). So if any documentation of that kind is available it would help a lot!

My question is: since I refer to files inside of public/ directory as if they were located in the root folder of my application, what's the different between putting the files in the public/ folder and in the root folder? Or is it just for organization sake?
Just because you can reference or "import" a file from public/ doesn't mean it functions in the same way to how a normal file import would work. Files located in public gets served as is without being minified/run through the Meteor pipleline. Second, these files are accessible to the client which makes sense given how'd import them without preceding slashes and keep them mostly to serve stuff like favicon and what not.
So in a sense, such files within public are made available within relation to your client bundle/code whilst not being a part of them, get it?
This way of serving assets isn't unique to Meteor, even React has a public directory.
Also the documentation I quoted above makes some examples using assets (some pngs and favicon.ico) and no JavaScript or HTML files. Am I able to put some JavaScript code in there and then import them in another file by referencing as if this code was located in the root of my app? Or is the public/ directory somewhat made only for assets?
AFAIK, you can have files of any type in public but since
It's served as is to the client, meaning it's exposed to the public
It doesn't get minified (i.e being part of the final application build code)
You're advised to not have any of the application code within this directory.

The Public folder is how you serve your static files, when you put a file in your root folder it will not be sent to the client by default and you can't use it in your css, when you put that file (say an image) in your public folder you can use it from the css and refer to it as if it was in your root folder, so if I put a.jpg in the public folder I can use url(/a.jpg) in my css, that won't work if a.jpg is simply in your root folder, that's what the docs mean when they say it's served as if it was the root folder.

unlike in Rails, Meteor initiatives don’t have a rigid document structure and you are quite a whole lot free to prepare your projects as you want. a few folder names but have unique which means, and documents within them will be dealt with in a different way.
consumer
files here will be loaded at the client simplest. files in that folder don’t need things like Meteor.isClient.
server
Loaded on the server best, duh! No need for Meteor.isServer whilst files are in that folder, the client won’t see these files.
public
This directory is for property like photographs. on your initiatives, you reference stuff in the public folder as if they have been in the root folder. as an example, when you have a report: public/nude.jpg, then for your app you include it with .
personal
files only available at the server facet thru the assets API.
checks
documents in there received’t be loaded anywhere and are used for checking out your app.
lib
documents in that folder are loaded earlier than whatever else, which makes it the best listing to vicinity the distinct libraries used on a undertaking.

How to organize folders and files on Meteor project?

I'm trying to understand Meteor as I create a project and I find some things a little difficult to understand so far.
1- When they say I can create a server and a client folder, where exactly I am meant to do so? Sibling of .meteor ? And will everything be at client's or server's scope when the app starts or do I have to do something else? If I create a foo.js and a foo function inside it in client folder, can I just call foo() in Meteor.isClient and it will work?
2- I need to create an upload folder so people can upload their stuff (images). So where am I supposed to do this? Plus, how can I get the absolute path to my project and find this upload folder inside?
During my attempts I tried the following:
fs = Meteor.npmRequire('fs');
__ROOT_APP_PATH__ = fs.realpathSync('.');
But __ROOT_APP_PATH__ is .meteor\local\build\programs\server. Quite hidden right?!
3- I saw some people uploading and saving files on MongoDB directly. This is something we usually don't do with relational databases. We move the file to a known folder on a CDN or on our own disk and save the hash or name of that file so we can easily find it. Isn't it encouraged with Meteor + MongoDB? Why would I save the file itself on Mongo instead of moving it to a folder?

not any specific way to do but meteor recommend it doing this way
http://docs.meteor.com/#/basic/filestructure

FOLDER STRUCTURE:
both/ (OR lib/) -- common code for server and client
|- collections/ -- declare collections (e.g Employer = new Meteor.Collection("employer");)
|- router / -- router code(e.g Router.route(..))
client/ -- client side code
|- global/ -- all global variable for client
|- helpers/ -- global helper for client (for all templates)
|- plugins/ -- all the plugins code(if you use any)
|- stylesheets/ -- css / less files
|- templates/ -- all templates
|- home.html -- home template(html)
|- home.js -- home template(js)
public/ -- images/icons/fonts (meteor looking at this file)
server/ -- server code
|- methods/ -- server methods/API (e.g Meteor.methods({...}))
|- publish/ -- publish code from server
this is the basic folder structure for meteor project which i follow. For further reference or Documentation. For any question feel free ask in comments..

Trying to precompile html files in to one js file using grunt/gulp

In my Single page application project, I am using client templates. After searching on Internet, I came to know that client side templates can be organized in three ways:
Writing Script tags in index.html with type, say: text/template.
Writing the templates in separate .html files and write the code in server to gather all the .html files and create one .js file.
Watching changes in template on client side: In this there will be a compiler which watches the .html template files for changes and generates/updates a .js file. (just like SCSS or less)
The first approach is making my index.html look messed up. So, I decided to go with the third approach because it keeps client side code to itself without any interference from sever code (like second approach).
I am using Backbone and lodash.js for templates.
I found that I can watch the templates for changes using grunt's grunt-template-module.
I have gone through getting started of grunt and added Gruntfile.js and package.json in the root folder of my project.
Gruntfile.js
module.exports = function(grunt) {
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
template-module: {
myTemplates:{
files: {
"demo.js": ["app/templates/header.html"]
}
options: {
module: true
}
}
}
});
};
package.json
// empty file
Now, I am not able to understand what should I do next? Any help would be really appreciated?
PS: The backend technology is PHP. I am using node.js just to access grunt. Please also let me know if there is any better alternative.

Structure application with Backbone.js and Express.js

I've been searching about this topic but I don't find any clear answer about it. I am starting to learn about Backbone apps. And I want to integrate Backbone in my Express.js application. What is the best way to organize the folder structure?

Backbone.js is more of the frontend. Thus, it could belong to a separate directory.
As for your express app, I would recommend to transform it into a backend API, which helps you with fetching all the data from mongoDB or other backend related transactions. Now, it would look something like
yourExpressApi <= backend
backboneapp <=frontend
Now the backbone app should contain the directories
js with subdirectories "lib", "views" and "models", with file index.js, which will serve as the entry point for backbone.js. lib directory should contain, underscore, backbone, marionette, bootstrap, jQuery etc etc.
templates, where you place your view templates. Since underscore.js is a dependency for backbone.js and is template driven.
index.html, where you place all the scripts needed. It has to be a ONE PAGE APP.
You may add other directories at will.

There is no restrictions or a best way to do it. But I use the functional architecture most of the time and it works pretty well:
I usually use a separate static folder for the client-app like below
app.use("/", express.static(__dirname + "/public"));
The architecture of this folder could be like below:
|- public/
|----- index.html (include the scripts from vendors and app dir, could be as main layout)
|----- vendors/ (here you place the libs like jquery, underscore, backbone ...)
|----- css/ (you css files)
|----- imgs/ (here the images that you use)
|----- nls/ (if you have multi lingual application)
|----- app/
|------- app.js (configure your backbone application)
|------- routes.js
|------- models/ (here you place your backbone models)
|------- modules/ (functional folders for each feature in you app)
|---------- index/ (each module contain its backbone views and template files)
|---------- signup/
|---------- profile/
you can access the files like this "localhost:3000/index.html" is your index file, "localhost:3000/css/whatever.css"
if you have big modules and a lot of routes in each, you could put a router file for each feature (signup, profile, ..)
if you have common UI widgets you could place them in separate folder as well, for example "app/widgets/SpecialButton"

Excluding references from Typescript compilation?

I have a bit of a strange (but in my view sensible) scenario.
I have a web site, mobile application and maybe going forward a web server all written in Javascript. I have a huge chunk of functionality which is shared between all these systems. This shared stuff would be models, repositories, business logic etc etc.
If we exclude the web server bit as that is a future idea, the web application has a directory structure like this:
app
|- assets
|- models
|- services
|- migrations
|- view-models
|- views
|- descriptors
Now each of these applications is broken down into 2 areas, the core and ui sections, the core is the re-usable stuff such as models, services, migrations and the ui stuff is ONLY used for that application which would comprise of view-models, descriptors (Incase you are wondering views are all html and assets are css, images etc).
Before I was adopting typescript I had a build script which would basically combine all the core files together and minify them. Then it would combine all the UI ones together and minify them. That way in the mobile application I can then just use the my-app.core.min.js and everyone is happy, I am reusing all the re-usable components from the main web application. However I do not need the ui stuff as the mobile UI is completely different to the main web ui, and the web service would not even have a UI going forward.
SO!
With that context explained lets jump back to the Typescript problem at hand. Currently the typescript files are compiled by tsc.exe (version 0.83) via a build script, which just wraps the interaction.
So in the new Typescript world the structure now has a references folder like so:
app
|- assets
|- models
|- services
|- migrations
|- view-models
|- views
|- descriptors
|- references <- NEW ONE!
This references folder is automatically populated by the build script with all local references, so it will trawl through the whole directory tree find all typescript files and build a huge reference file, which is a file full of the reference declarations for local typescript file, to find out more about what im on about look over this question:
Can you create Typescript packages? like c# dlls
So now when I run the build script the following steps happen:
Compiling for Core
Find all *.ts files within the models, services, migrations folders and subfolders
Add all the previous files into an array and also add in the reference files
run tsc.exe with a command like so tsc.exe --out <something>.core.js <previous_file_list>
Compiling for UI
Find all *.ts files within the view-models, descriptors folders and subfolders
Add all the previous files into an array and also add in the reference files
run tsc.exe with a command like so tsc.exe --out <something>.ui.js <previous_file_list>
Now I was expecting this to output 2 files my-app.core.js which ONLY contained the core files, and a my-app.ui.js which ONLY contained the ui files. However they both include everything...
Now after thinking about this, it must be due to the references, as they are both referencing all files, however thats just a compilation dependency in my eyes, not something that needs to be compiled WITH the outputted javascript. In c#/java you would not expect a referenced dll/jar to be compiled into your outputted dll/jar, its just a runtime dependency which is required.
I have tried having 2 separate reference files, one for core and one for ui, but as the ui will depend on core I get same problem, although at least this way the my-app.core.js is devoid of any ui related guff.
So is there a way to have references but NOT have them be outputted into the generated javascript files?

You can accomplish this by generating definition files for your TypeScript files:
tsc --declaration FileName.ts
In your build script do this for each TypeScript file and use the generated FileName.d.ts as the reference instead of FileName.ts
I had the following files:
-BusinessObjects
--Product.ts
--Customer.ts
--Order.ts
--BusinessObjects.d.ts
BusinessObjects.d.ts looks like this:
/// <reference path="Customer.d.ts" />
/// <reference path="Order.d.ts" />
/// <reference path="Product.d.ts" />
with Product, Customer, and Order each have a reference to BusinessObjects.d.ts
when I run:
tsc --out combine.js Customer.ts Order.ts
The output only references Customer and Order, Product is not included. When I referenced the *.ts files directly in my BusinessObjects.d.ts file however the combined output did include the unwanted file.