A boilerplate starter for full stack JS development using Node/Express, Grunt, Backbone, Marionette, Requirejs, Less, Handlebars & Google Analytics.
- Clone/fork this repository
- npm install
- bower install
- grunt
The default grunt task sets up a development server on port 8080 and watches for changes to source code in the client/js directory. Changed files are linted (jshint) and then copied to the public directory (the web root) verbatim.
The "grunt build" task runs the code from client/js via the requirejs optimiser and places the output in the public directory to be served by express.
Note that the public directory is periodically cleaned. Eg. Don't put source code in here, or it will be overwritten/deleted.
- client
Contains client side source code (.js, .less etc)
- vendor Contains bower components. Mounted by express as /vendor
- public The web root where files are served over http. Note that all content in this directory is/should be generated by the build script or similar.
- server The code to run the nodejs/express dev server.
- templates Shared (client and server) templates directory. By default uses handlebars templates. Mounted by express as /templates.
There is a config.json file that contains settings for each environment, such as the google analytics tracking code id and the base path to static assets. The assetPath setting is best set to '' (nothing) for development but can be used to serve static files from a CDN or other remote host in staging/production environments.
If you want to test google analytics locally, it's best to use 127.0.0.1 (or another resolvable hostname/ip) over localhost, otherwise tracking events will not be sent (hostname mismatch). Likewise, the dev analytics account needs to be set to the same hostname.