I have cloned the Angular2 quickstart repo and build a simple app. I want to publish it to the web now. It runs locally but it references files directly inside the node_modules directory.
Is there a standard build process I can run that will copy all needed files to the output directory? Or do I have to create this myself from scratch with a task runner or something?
This is my first time to answer a question so bear with me if I didnt do it correctly.
If "bundling all angular 2 ts/js and other dependencies (core.js, rxjs, zone.js) into one js and create a script tag on index.html to reference the bundled js" close to the standard build process you mentioned and you want, my answer is yes, you probably need to npm install some other tools to do it.
Since the angular 2 quickstart is using systemjs to do ES module loading, the tool you can use is called "systemjs builder" https://github.com/systemjs/builder which helps you to do bundling (based on systemjs.config.js) and yes, you can use a task tunner (grunt or gulp) with systemjs builder plugins (gulp-systemjs-builder or grunt-systemjs-builder) to create a task to "build".
You can use this https://github.com/AngularClass/angular2-webpack-starter
And using npm run build:dev or npm run build:prod
It will build a dist folder and that's all you need.
Related
I'm trying to use an API via it's helpfully developed JS SDK. So the SDK instructions on the GitHub page are to npm install. I'm wondering though, does this imply I have to have Node.js because the SDK has been written specifically for it, or if I just have basic vanilla JS/jQuery, can I just.... Copy the source code from GitHub into my scripts or use it some other way?
It means that the project is using npm to handle dependencies. It has a package.json file that stores what those dependencies are, and npm install will download them into a folder usually called 'node_modules.'
It's dependency management. It doesn't mean it's written for node, but that it uses node to download external dependencies.
I'm completely new to frontend web dev with a very basic question. Once I npm install something, how do I actually use it? For example, I just did npm install bootstrap, and I would now like to be able to use the CSS and Javascript that it downloaded. I'm sure I shouldn't have to dig through the directories to find some entry point... so how do I now use bootstrap in my webpage?
Most modules on NPM are used in Node.js, for the server (backend). Node.js has a built-in function require('your-module') to make use of the module. This function is not present on the frontend in the browser. However, there are tools like browserify or webpack and probably others to make the NPM modules and the require function work in the frontend.
If you're just starting out I suggest you take a look at Bower first. With Bower (installed with NPM though) you can pull in all your frontend libraries like jQuery, Bootstrap, etc. to your project folder and you can point your script tags in your HTML to the bower_components/ directory, e.g. <script src="/bower_components/jquery/jquery.min.js"></script>. You can save a list of all libraries used with a version number in a json file called bower.json in the root of your project folder.
Based on this file you can pull in or update all the libraries listed with the use of the command line.
As a really general rule, npm is used for assets your node app will use on the server, while bower (and others) are the equivalent for dependencies that you want to use on the client.
That said, the use is basically the same.
npm (and bower) install the files into your project directory in a standard location. All you really have to do is make sure that location is accessible via a web request (typically, node_modules is not; which is why bower came about), and then embed link and script tags as appropriate in your html:
<script src='/node_modules/bootstrap/js/bootstrap.min.js'></script>
this is probably a silly question but am new to Meteor and struggling a bit. I want to build a stellar app that tweets when you get stellar. There is a nice Javascript API stellar-lib that works on node, but im unsure how to access the modules in Meteor...
I'm also building an app with Meteor and stellar-lib and have found two options:
1) You can manually copy over the built stellar-lib.js or stellar-lib-min.js from the build/ directory from either the github repo or the node_modules folder you installed it to when you ran the npm install command.
If you do this, you will have to copy the .js file to client/compatibility, otherwise stellar-lib will not work (note: this means you can only use Stellar on the client).
2) If you need it on the server, you can also have browserify wrap stellar-lib for you, then copy the output to lib/ in your Meteor app's root directory. I did this in my repo here with gulp.
Here's a short explanation to how 2) works:
.gulp is where I'll install my NPM modules where they will be ignored by the Meteor build environment (because the folder is hidden).
In deps.js, I require the modules I would want to use in my Meteor app as I would if I was using them in a traditional node.js app. package.json defines the modules I'll install with NPM and the gulpfile.js describes a build task that will resolve my require statements and output a single deps.js file that includes my dependencies to my Meteor app's lib/ folder.
I added highlight.js to bower.json and installed it.
But there are only sources of highlight.js, how can I compile it using bower?
Bower is just download the dependencies. Installation is depends on what development environment are you at? Single page application with Yeoman? Node.JS web application with Express? Or something else.
There are some JS task runners like grunt or gulp. I prefer grunt. If you are using grunt, there is exist grunt's task runner for it called grunt-bower-task that will install your downloaded bower components into specific folder that meets our need.
I recommend you to use/ learn Yeoman that is included yo the scaffolding, bower the dependencies manager, and grunt the task runner if you are starting single page application development.
So basically bower is just front end dependency manager unlike NPM which is NodeJS dependency/ package manager that we usually use at backend/ web server.
since you are using bower to install highlight.js, i believe it's used at client side.
you don't need to compile javascript at all, you just need to load it and use it globally.
there are several ways to load it into global execution context:
inline script in html <script src="path/to/bower/component/highlight.js"></script>
using front-end AMD modularization tool like requirejs
use front-end CMD modularization tool like browserify, webpack
I created a small test program for web applications that uses jasmine, and I'm preparing it for easy downloads. Before installing my package, the user's project should look something like this:
myProject/
app/
lib/
...
I want to be able to have the user cd to myProject in the terminal, issue a single command that points to the app and lib folders, and then end up with this:
myProject/
app/
lib/
requirejs
test/
lib/
node_modules/
specs/
SpecRunner.html
server.js
...
app/ should contain the js project files, lib/ should contain all the external js dependencies for the project, and test/lib/ should contain all the external dependencies for the tests. server.js runs with nodejs and depends on apps installed in node_modules/.
What's the best way to go about doing this? I could make a bash script, but I'd rather use a package manager. I'm not sure how I'd do this in bower or npm. And am I right in thinking it's better to have two libs, one for the project and one for testing, rather than one? I know I can declare certain packages as test packages in bower, but it seems like they should live in a separate libraries.
And am I right in thinking it's better to have two libs, one for the project and one for testing, rather than one?
No. The idiomatic way in the npm-verse is to have tests in the same package in the test folder. Since bower is based on npm I'd say the same applies there too. If you don't want bower users to have to download test-stuff you should be able to ignore the test folder in the bower.json file (according to this answer). You should also specify node modules that are only used for tests as devDependencies.
Developers who want to run your test should IMO install it directly from source using e.g. git clone git#github.com/your/repo.git (and then just run npm install). Or simply npm install x if it's available on npm. Even if you really want the tests in their own package, I'd still suggest not using a package manager but ask the developer to clone it from the repo into the test folder.
Anyway to answer the question, the following one-liner should work (assuming npm, I'm not too familiar with bower):
npm install x-test && mv node_modules/x-test test