Node Boilerplate

Heavily modifed version of this

Requires Node v0.6.6 (or newer) node-boilerplate takes html-boilerplate, express, connect, jade, mongoose, mongoose-auth, and Socket.IO and organizes them into a ready to use website project. Its a fast way to get working on your Node website without having to worry about the setup. It takes care of all the boring parts, like setting up your views, 404 page, 500 page, getting the modules organized, etc...

###Node Boilerplate has these goals:

To end the repetition involved with starting a new Node website project
To never install anything outside of the project directory (For easier production deployment)
Quickly show best partices in regards to project organization, and code formating

###Project oranaization

The project is organized into a traditional mvc pattern.

Models are in the ./models directory. By adding a reference in model.js to a new model, that model is initialized at boot. Another advantage of this is that by include a single model instance, all models are available via something like model.User
Views are in the ./views directory and should be organized into directories and files that match their route files.
Controllers are are located in ./controllers. By creating a new controller.js file, and exporting a paramerterless init() method, all routes are automatically initialized with no modifications to routes.js.

Other important files that have convential meaning

server.js is the default name for starting the application. This comes from Joyent's cloud server default configuration.
packages.js holds all the dependencies for the project. Any packages references in code should be initialized through here, and not installed globally

###Tools of Choice

While most people will have a unique editor that they enjoy most (VIM, TextMate, etc), Aptana 3 is a great solution.
Supervisor is a great tool to auto relaunch the application
NodeInspector is a great browser based debuger if you can't log items out

###Modules Used

Express - Web framework (includes connect)
Jade - Javascript based templating engine
Mongoose - Node.JS driver and wrapper for MongoDB
MongooseAuth - MongoDB based authentication system, based on everyauth
Socket.IO - Real time web framework. Websockets with fall back strategies.
Backbone - Client side MVC framework
nConf - Node configuration helper
Mocha - Unit testing framework
Should - Helper module to BDD assertions

###Code format

Formating code is good practice. In large development teams, have well formated code makes working together easier. This section is very open to contribution, and most of the code starndard should be very visable though the boilerplate code. These conventions are chosen to match the language, and the node.js community convention.

Use spaces and not tabs. This is an easy change in the settings of Aptana to replace tabs with spaces (2).

Declare new variables with comma's on the same line. This goes against most node.js convention, but adheres to standard javascript convention. This is important to have the comma on the same line for older browser compatability if we are repurposing any code to the client. For example:

var util = require('util'),
  express = require('express');

Curly braces should be inline, eq exports.myFunc = new function(){. They should not be declared on a seperate line.

In general, everything should conform to JSLint tests where possible.

###To start a boilerplate project:

git clone git@github.com:ifit/node-boilerplate.git mynewproject
cd mynewproject
rm -rf .git README.md
npm install

This will copy all of the required project files, and remove the reference to this git repo so you can start your own, and install the required packages

###To run the boilerplate template app:

Make sure that you have a mongoDB service running, if it is not running by default enter mongod into a terminal window

In a seperate terminal window start the server by entering node server.js

Go to http://localhost:3000 and login via facebok or local. Once you are logged in you can send simple chat messages to yourself.

###Additional Features:

Creates a package.json file consistent with associated best practices (http://blog.nodejitsu.com/package-dependencies-done-right)
Adds .gitignore for the node_modules directory
Includes 404 page and associated route
Includes 500 page
Loads external config vars using nconf from env vars, shell vars, and confi file vars
Automatic route loading
Authentecation built in
Ready for unit tests

###Todos:

Cleanup HTML5 Boilerplate and css includes to not be so intrusive
Documentation generator
Basic redis implementation (a cache would be a good starting point)
..

bevans/node-boilerplate

Node Boilerplate