AngularJS CRUD application demo

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Purpose

The idea is to demonstrate how to write a typical, non-trivial CRUD application using AngularJS. To showcase AngularJS in its most advantageous environment we've set out to write a simplified project management tool supporting teams using the SCRUM methodology. The sample application tries to show best practices when it comes to: folders structure, using modules, testing, communicating with a REST back-end, organizing navigation, addressing security concerns (authentication / authorization).

This sample application is featured in our book where you can find detailed description of the patterns and techniques used to write this code:

We've learned a lot while using and supporting AngularJS on the mailing list and would like to share our experience.

Stack

• Persistence store: MongoDB hosted on MongoLab
• Backend: Node.js
• Awesome AngularJS on the client
• CSS based on Bootstrap

Build

It is a complete project with a build system focused on AngularJS apps and tightly integrated with other tools commonly used in the AngularJS community:

• powered by gulp.js
• test written using Jasmine syntax
• test are executed by Karma Test Runner (integrated with the gulp.js build)
• build supporting JS, CSS and AngularJS templates minification
• Travis-CI integration

Installation

Platform & tools

You need to install Node.js and then the development tools. Node.js comes with a package manager called npm for installing NodeJS applications and libraries.

• Install node.js (requires node.js version >= 0.8.4)

• Install gulp and Karma runner as global npm modules:

  npm install -g gulp karma
  

Get the Code

Either clone this repository or fork it on GitHub and clone your fork:

git clone https://github.com/angular-app/angular-app.git
cd angular-app

App Server

Our backend application server is a NodeJS application that relies upon some 3rd Party npm packages. You need to install these:

• Install local dependencies (from the project root folder):

  cd server
  npm install
  cd ..
  

  (This will install the dependencies declared in the server/package.json file)

Client App

Our client application is a straight HTML/Javascript application but our development process uses a Node.js build tool gulp.js. gulp relies upon some 3rd party libraries that we need to install as local dependencies using npm.

• Install local dependencies (from the project root folder):

  cd client
  npm install
  cd ..
  

  (This will install the dependencies declared in the client/package.json file)

Building

Configure Server

The server stores its data in a MongoLab database.

• Create an account at MongoLab - it's free: [https://mongolab.com/signup/].

• Create a database to use for this application: [https://mongolab.com/create]

• Grab your API key: [https://mongolab.com/user?username=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE]

• Edit server/config.js to set your MongoLab API Key and the name of the database you created.

  mongo: {
      dbUrl: 'https://api.mongolab.com/api/1',    // The base url of the MongoLab DB server
      apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY_HERE',                // Our MongoLab API key
  },
  security: {
      dbName: 'YOUR_DB_NAME_HERE',                // The name of database that contains the security information
      usersCollection: 'users'                    // The name of the collection contains user information
  },
  

• Optionally change the name of admin user in server/lib/initDB.js. The default is 'Admin' ([email protected] : changeme).

  var initDB = {
    adminUser: { email: '[email protected]', password: 'changeme', admin: true, firstName: 'Admin', lastName: 'User' },
  });
  // Note the user information, including password, are stored as plain text in the MongoLab database.
  

• Run our initialization script to initialize the database with a first admin user ([email protected] : changeme).

  node server/initDB.js
  

Configure Client

The client specifies the name of the MongoDB to use in client/src/app/app.js. If your DB is not called "ascrum" then you need to change the MONGOLAB_CONFIG constant:

angular.module('app').constant('MONGOLAB_CONFIG', {
  baseUrl: '/databases/',
  dbName: 'ascrum'
});

Build the client app

The app made up of a number of javascript, css and html files that need to be merged into a final distribution for running. We use the gulp build tool to do this.

• Build client application:

  cd client
  gulp
  cd ..
  

It is important to build again if you have changed the client configuration as above.

Running

Start the Server

• Run the server

  cd server
  node server.js
  cd ..
  

• Browse to the application at [http://localhost:3000]

• Login with the admin user as defined in server/lib/initDB.js.

Browser Support

We only regularly test against Chrome 29 and occasionally against Firefox and Internet Explorer. The application should run on most modern browsers that are supported by the AngularJS framework. Obviously, if you chose to base your application on this one, then you should ensure you do your own testing against browsers that you need to support.

Development

Folders structure

At the top level, the repository is split into a client folder and a server folder. The client folder contains all the client-side AngularJS application. The server folder contains a very basic Express based webserver that delivers and supports the application. Within the client folder you have the following structure:

• node_modules contains build tasks for gulp along with other, user-installed, Node packages
• dist contains build results
• src contains application's sources
• test contains test sources, configuration and dependencies
• vendor contains external dependencies for the application

Default Build

The default gulp task will build (checks the javascript (lint), runs the unit tests (`test``) and builds distributable files:

• cd client
• gulp

Continuous Building

The watch gulp task will monitor the source files and run the default build task every time a file changes: gulp watch.

Build without tests

If for some reason you don't want to run the test but just generate the files - not a good idea(!!) - you can simply run the build task: gulp build.

Continuous testing

You can have gulp (karma) continuously watch for file changes and automatically run all the tests on every change, without rebuilding the distribution files. This can make the test run faster when you are doing test driven development and don't need to actually run the application itself.

• cd client
• Run gulp tdd. In the default configuration it will start a new instance of Chrome.
• The task will wait for code changes, re-executing tests on each change.