Frontend Bootstrap
Kickoff for web applications.
Main Tools
First steps
Installing node
Get the latest version of node from the official website or using nvm Nvm approach is preferred. Also, you may find this tool useful to automate version changing between projects.
Getting the dev dependencies
Run npm install
from rootpath of the project.
Bower and gulp. The right way
In the following step you will need to use bower, and during the project development you will probably use gulp every day, so let's use them in the right way.
A very popular way of getting these packages is simply tell npm to install them globally using the -g
flag.
That's needless as gulp and bower are already in this project dependencies. A big problem can have place if the version of the packages that were installed globally do not match the versions that this project require.
The right way to execute these tools is using the binaries in the node_modules folder, that is node_modules/.bin/
.
To execute bower just use the following ./node_modules/.bin/bower
. Same for gulp.
Adding an alias for these tools is highly recommended. Like the following:
alias gulp='node_modules/.bin/gulp'
alias bower='node_modules/.bin/bower'
Getting the project dependencies
The actual dependencies that will be used to develop the app are managed using bower. You can easily get them with the following command
bower install
You may be asking: why don't we simply get these packages using npm? Here are some articles I suggest reading about bower:
Gulp
To start your app run gulp
in the rootpath of the project. Then access your app at localhost:port. The port is logged in the console where you ran gulp.
Take a look at GULP_TASKS.md for a detailed explanation of the gulp tasks.
Development
Environments
By default, the environment will be development, but you can easily change it using the env param in your gulp tasks: gulp build --env production
SCSS
When creating SCSS files you don't need to import other files inside yours to use properties from them. There's a specific file called application.scss
where every SCSS file should be imported in the desired priority order. This works just like the stylesheet elements in the head of an html, when repeated rules are present the rule that was imported last will override the other.
Vendors
To add a vendor simply install and save it using bower, then add the path of the source files, relative to the bower_components folder, to vendorJs.js or vendorCss.js depending on what you are adding. i.e: Adding jquery
bower install --save jquery
This will generate the jquery folder inside bower_components. Then, add the source file of jquery to vendorJs.js. It should look like this:
module.exports = [
'jquery/dist/jquery.js',
];
Maintenance
If your app will be down for a period of time, you can set up a maintenance page during the downtime.
gulp build:maintenance
will move the contents of src/maintenance
to the build folder, then
you only need to deploy that.
If you want to customize the maintenance page, just change the contents of the src/maintenance
folder.
Image compression
If you want to reduce your assets weight so that the build is ligther, you can turn on image compression option. To make this possible, set imageCompression
variable as true
in gulp/config.js
file.
Webp Compression
Image compression is accomplished using gulp-webp.
Things to take into account:
- If your assets include
.png
files, make surelibpng
library is already installed. - If your assets include
.jpeg
files, make surelibjpeg
library is already installed.
If any of these are not installed you have to first uninstall webp
like the following:
npm remove gulp-webp
Now, install the missing libraries.
Finally, reinstall gulp-webp
with the following command:
npm install
Remember that you now have to reference your assets with .webp
extension.
Errors
Rollbar is the tool we use to track errors. To set it up in the project follow these instructions:
- Install rollbar.js
bower install rollbar --save
- Add the rollbar snippet to
vendorJs
file
'rollbar/dist/rollbar.snippet.js'
-
Add the rollbar credentials in each secrets file in the
config
folder at the root of the project. -
Add the
_rollbarConfig
configuration to thehead
ofsrc/index.jade
script.
_rollbarConfig = {
accessToken: '<!-- @echo ROLLBAR_ACCESS_TOKEN -->',
captureUncaught: true,
payload: {
environment: '<!-- @echo environment -->'
}
};
Rollbar is now monitoring your page for all unhandled exceptions and is available via the global window.Rollbar
object.
Any further information can be found in the tracking tool repository
Deploy
S3
In order to deploy you must first create config/aws.js file with the credentials of the Amazon S3 bucket for each environment. The file needs to have to follow the format specified in config/aws.js.example
Then just run gulp s3 --env <environment name>
with your desired env as parameter.
Heroku
Pushing the desired branch to heroku should be enough.
Troubleshooting
npm permissions
If you are struggling with permission problems when using npm, you can try the following commands to avoid using sudo
every time you have this troubles.
sudo chown -R $USER ~/.npm
sudo chown -R $USER .
S3 deploy
NOTE: You must have the corrects AIM permissions, if not, amazon will report an Access Denied error
gulp watch
If having problems with gulp watch
, run echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p
.
This solution was found here.
Google Analytics
In order to monitor your page by google analytics set GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_TRACK_ID with the tracking id in each secrets file in the config
folder at the root of the project.
Contributing
- Fork it
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature
) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature'
) - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature
) - Create new Pull Request
About
This project is maintained by Sebastian Balay and it was written by Wolox.
License
frontend-bootstrap is available under the MIT license.
Copyright (c) 2015 Sebastián Balay <sebastian.balay@wolox.com.ar>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.