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.

Is it necessary to add an "android_assets" folder to my app's main?

I've finished making an app with HTML, CSS, and JS files, all of which I've stored in the 'assets' folder of Android Studio.
The app runs without crashing, but only this screen appears:
Empty app screen.
I've tried implementing each of the following file paths:
webView.loadUrl("file:///assets/menu.html");
webView.loadUrl("menu.html");
Neither of them work.
I've read that it's ideal to create a new folder in 'main' and call it 'android_assets' and then name the file path ("file:///android_assets/menu.html"); but I don't want to inadvertently create more problems in my code.
Should I create the 'android_assets' folder? Is there anything I'd risk in doing so?

Try this:
1.
Ensure your assets path is: assets/foldersIfAny/index.html
2.
Then use this:
webView.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/foldersIfAny/index.html");

Electron modify file store in .asar

I would like, from the Electron index.html file, to modify a config file present in the.asar of my application. In my case I need to change, if necessary, my application database config in order to work.
I understood that .asar is in readOnly and I wanted to know if there is a way to modify this config file from electron without changing its position in my application?
I see the extraResources option but I did not understand how its work.
It's also important that the config file stay in myapp/config folder.
Thanks for your help :)

What build tool do you use? If you are using electron builder, you can check out asarUnpack in configuration file here or extraFiles here

I was able to edit the read-only file by first changing the file permissions programmatically and then editing it.
fs.chmod(filename, 0666, (error) => {
console.log('Changed file permissions');
});
...
code to modify file
...

asar is in readonly
as you mentioned asar intended to be readonly package. For runtime-changing config, you should place it outside of asar and change values accordingly.

To manage settings you should use a node package that's specifically designed for this, like electron-settings or preferences.
As an alternative one may manually read an write config files that you place in the platform's native config directory.
Mutable application settings shouldn't be stored in the asar file. If it's required to replace a file in an asar archive for any other reason, use the the asar program to extract the entire archive to a temporary directory, replace the file(s) you want, then create a new asar file, replacing the original asar file.

To unpack .asar files -> asar extract electron.asar app
modify as per your needs
To pack .asar files -> asar pack . electron.asar

How do I make text files accessible to the server on Meteor

I'm surprised I can't google my answer here... it seems no one else is having the issue.
When you run the meteor service the js, html, etc. is packaged in the .meteor/local/build folder, but it appears to exclude stuff that isn't js or html. I have a folder called "magicsets" and one called "magicimgs" and neither are in the /local/build folder. This is obviously why, when i attempt to use fs to readfile, it fails to find the file "magicsets/M14.json"
I tried putting the magicsets folder into a folder named "private", but that didn't accomplish anything.
How do I make files accessible locally to my server via FS and how do I make files accessible publically to my server via raw urls?
I'm sure I'm missing something very simple, because there are lots of more complicated questions and answers on SO, yet there is no answer for this. Thanks.

Meteor 0.6.5 which was released yesterday has a new feature which helps loads with this.
Make a directory called /private which you can access with the new Assets.getText or Assets.getBinary functions.
The stuff in the /private directory will then be bundled up into a directory called assets in /program/server/assets and it will not be accessible to the web & you wouldn't need to worry about using fs either. You could just use Assets.getText instead
To make a publicly accessible file put it in /public. So if you had a.jpg at /public/a.jpg it would be accessible at http://yourdomain.com/a.jpg

If you want text files to be available to the webserver i.e. the server that defaults to port 3000, create a folder called public in the root of the project/app directory. drop your folder and files there. You would then be able to access them as http://localhost:3000/magicsets/M14.json
update: it looks like can override the bundler, but it does require changing some of the core code there's no .meteorignore file yet. check this SO answer out: https://stackoverflow.com/a/16742853/105282

To serve a directory of files publicly independent of what Meteor is doing, you can use the following approach. I do this, for example, when I need to link an entire (Javascript) git repo into my Meteor app so I can work on a checked out version of the library.
The following works for 0.6.5. It basically servers up a checked out folder of OpenLayers in /lib:
connect = Npm.require('connect')
RoutePolicy.declare('/lib', 'network')
WebApp.connectHandlers
.use(connect.bodyParser())
.use('/lib', connect.static("/home/mao/projects/openlayers/lib"))
For more information, see https://github.com/meteor/meteor/issues/1229.

Export static HTML+CSS+JS from Rails

When creating static apps I often start a new Rails app. This makes quite some things easier, like compilation (Coffeescript, SCSS), minimization (JS, CSS) and browser limitations (the page is being served from localhost:3000 so external sources can be loaded etc.).
At the end I want to export the app so I can put it online. Then I just need the HTML+CSS+JS. One can go and pluck the files out manually, but there probably is an easier way for this.
So: is there a tool that stores the compiled, minimized HTML+CSS+JS files from a Rails app?

If you just want to basically copy the website as it will be rendered by rails (and there is no need for server side code execution), you could just mirror the rails-website using
wget --page-requisites --convert-links http://URL-to-Start
However, this will only download those files that are referenced from the entry URL, so you might need to run it on all sub-URLs individually.
Source: Download a working local copy of a webpage

Agree with Screenmutt. I've tried a couple of the ones mentioned but have had most success with:
http://middlemanapp.com/
Does pretty much everything you are asking for and let's you export to static HTML.
install:
gem install middleman
create project:
middleman init my_new_project (or even better with template --template=html5)
run in local server for live edits:
bundle exec middleman
dump static code:
bundle exec middleman build

Perhaps you can 'scrape' the HTML from the localhost serving it?
There seem to be some tools for downloading sites in general... You can probably limit them to download resources from localhost:3000 only.
http://www.httrack.com/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/downloading-entire-web-site-wget

UPDATE: Here's another tutorial that might help Use Rails 3.1 for Static Sites
This is not a common usage. You might be able to extract all the static pages by manually caching everything.
I would recommend taking a look at some alternatives.
I'm sorry that this isn't a good answer, but to be honest... You are using Rails for something that it was never intended to do. There are much better ways of making static sites.
Also, a static site is not an "app". :)

All you have to do is switch to Rails production mode locally so that assets are combined and minified. Then all you have to do is view source for the HTML, CSS, and JS. This should only take a few seconds.
So the steps are
config.assets.compress = true in development.rb
view the app locally
view source, copy and paste into an index.html file
click on compressed CSS and JS form source and save those relative to your index.html making sure they link correctly

You can use Wget (as it's already mentioned). I would go with:
wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent http://www.yourdomain.com
Yo can also use Httrack.
Be sure when you set Httrack you exclude all external websites with scripts so you don't download f.e. Google Analytics js files or Adsense or Facebook scripts. In Httrack, you exclude it in Preferences with:
-*.googlesyndication.com/* -*.facebook.net/* -*.google-analytics.com/*
After you are done you still need to rewrite all links because they will point at .../some-page/index.html You need .../some-page/. This solves Dynamic to Static Script.

You shouldn't serve them from rails or do anything that binds your static files to being served from rails. You may one day decide to serve your app from a CDN.
JS
One big tip would be to look at using AMD (async module definition), which would allow you to specify your JS file dependencies. Then you can use require.js and r.js(a tool that crawl and compile your dependencies in you precompile step). That would work for your JS.
CSS
For CSS, you could use sass or less. You'd include 1 file at the end of the day on your page, but the compilation process would involve merging your CSS files together. Once again this can be done at the pre-compile step.
CDN
There are gems out there that show take your assets and pass them over to something like S3, this answer and others like it would help: Is there a way to asset pipeline assets to s3 when pushing to heroku? ; however, that isn't necessary when you are first starting.

I did it with a Rake task that would fetch each of the Rails routes one at a time. It needed a bit of jiggery pokery to handle the fact that you might have conflicting routes - e.g. wget would fetch /objects as a file called "objects" but then when you want to fetch /objects/4 it would overwrite that file with a folder called "objects" with a nested file called "4". So I move each downloaded page to "index.html" inside a directory with the same name.
Here's my code, which I out in lib/tasks/export.rake:
def adjust_paths(path)
text = File.read(path)
new_contents = text.gsub(/("|\.\.\/)(assets|packs)\//, "\\1../\\2/")
new_contents = new_contents.gsub("http://localhost:3020", "")
File.write(path, new_contents)
end
namespace :static do
desc 'Generate static site in ./out/ directory'
task :export => [
'assets:clean',
'assets:precompile',
:start_rails_server
] do
begin
out_prefix = "dist"
paths = Rails.application.routes.routes.map do |route|
route.path.spec.to_s
end.uniq.reject { |p| p.starts_with?("/rails") || p == "/cable" || p == "/assets" }
paths = paths.map { |p| p.sub("(.:format)", "") }
paths.sort_by(&:length).each do |path|
if path.include?(":id")
# You'll have to use your own method for deciding which ids to use
ids = ["1", "2", "3", "4"]
else
ids = [""]
end
ids.each do |id|
id_path = path.sub(":id", id)
`wget -P #{out_prefix} -nH -p -k http://localhost:3020#{id_path}`
if id_path != "/"
file_path = "#{out_prefix}#{id_path}"
FileUtils.mv(file_path, "#{file_path}.tmp", force: true)
FileUtils.mkdir_p(file_path)
result = FileUtils.mv("#{file_path}.tmp", "#{file_path}/index.html", force: true)
puts "Moving #{id_path} to #{id_path}/index.html: #{result}"
# Will then need to relativise all of the asset paths, since we've moved it
adjust_paths("#{file_path}/index.html")
end
end
end
ensure
# stop the server when we're done
Rake::Task['static:stop_rails_server'].reenable
Rake::Task['static:stop_rails_server'].invoke
end
end
desc 'Start a Rails server in the static Rails.env on port 3020'
task :start_rails_server do
`RAILS_SERVE_STATIC_FILES=1,RAILS_ENV=static rails s -p 3020 -d`
end
desc 'Stop Rails server'
task :stop_rails_server do
`cat tmp/pids/server.pid | xargs -I {} kill {}`
end
end
Then you can just do bundle exec rake static:export