Angular Express With Coffee Boilerplate

This is a template project using Node Express as backend and Angular as frontend in CoffeeScript.

The project is a extremely simple blog app to demonstrate the framework, features includes sign in/sign up, list all posts and create a new post.

MongoDB is used as database and JWT token for authentication instead of cookie since tokens are more secure and mobile friendly (token vs cookie).

Requirements

• NodeJs
• Express
• CoffeeScript
• Jade
• Stylus
• bootstrap-stylus
• Nib
• Mongoose
• jsonwebtoken

Install

git clone https://github.com/FindBoat/angular-express-coffee [project-name]
cd [project-name]
npm install
npm install -g coffeescript

Run

In dev mode:

npm run dev

In prod mode:

npm run build
npm run start

Structure

/.app                            `compiled js for server and manage, created on the fly`
    /manage
    /server
/public                          `compiled js and css for client, created on the fly`
/src
    /client
        /app
            /auth                `Views, controllers for sign in/sign up features`
            /blocks              `Reusable codes throughout different projects`
            /core                `Services used throughout the app`
            /posts               `Views, controllers for posts features`
            app.module.coffee    `Define the overall app module`
        index.jade
        styles.styl
    /server                      `CoffeeScript for server code`
        /config     
        /controllers             `Each controller is responsible for a single resource request`
        /models      
        app.coffee
        routes.coffee            `Route follows RESTful rule and requests are routed to the corresponding controller`
    /manage                      `Convenient management codes`

Project Details

Authentication

Instead of using cookie for authentication, I choose JWT due to better security and mobile friendly. After user login/signup, token is returned to client. For client, each request should contain 'x-access-token' in the HTTP header.

RESTful

APIs follow RESTful rules, in this project, user and post are two resources and have corresponding route and APIs. Server uses different controllers and client uses Angular $resource.

Compling

Since Express framework supports Jade & Stylus, we don't need to do much work to compile them. Boostrap-styl & nib are used, so we add few lines of code at src/server/app.coffee to config stylus compilation. Coffee is compiled into .app for server and manage code, and public/client for client code.

Angular Structure

Instead of grouping code into /controllers, /services, /directives etc., it is recommended to group by features (otherwise you're gonna end up w/ huge folders when project becomes larger).

Credits

• express-coffee The server side code is mostly inspired by this project.
• ng-demos The Angular style and code organization are inspired by this project. TODO: Write credits

License

See LICENSE

Contribute

pull requests are welcome