/koan

KOAN Stack (Koa, Angular, Node, Mongo, WebSockets) for real-time full-stack JavaScript web development.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

KOAN

Build Status

KOAN Stack is a boilerplate that provides a nice starting point for full stack JavaScript Web development with Koa, AngularJS, and Node.js along with MongoDB and WebSockets. A summary of tech stack:

  • Client: AngularJS and Twitter Bootstrap with pure html partials (no server side rendering so it's fully static and CDN ready). Bower packages are located at client\bower_packages.
  • Server: Koa for RESTful API on top of Node.js v0.11+ with the use of --harmony and generators.
  • WebSockets along with JSON-RPC is used for real-time client-server communication and browser sync.
  • Passport.js is used for social auth. Instead of auth cookies, we use JWT along with HTML5 local storage.
  • Grunt tasks are used to facilitate development and testing.
  • MongoDB for persistence. Possibly more to be added.

Live Example

Browse the live KOAN example on http://koanjs.com which is a Facebook like real-time sharing app.

Getting Started

Make sure that you have Node.js (v0.11 or above) and MongoDB (running on the default port 27017) installed on your computer. To get started with KOAN stack, do following:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/soygul/koan.git
cd koan
npm install
npm start

Your application should run on the 3000 port so in your browser just go to http://localhost:3000. If you want to run tests, simply type:

npm test

Configuration

All configuration is specified in the server/config folder, particularly the config.js file. Here you can hook up any social app keys if you want integration with Twitter, Facebook, or Google.

Heroku Deployment

Before you start make sure you have heroku toolbelt installed.

git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial version"
heroku apps:create
heroku addons:add mongohq
heroku labs:enable websockets
heroku config:add NODE_ENV=production
git push heroku master
heroku open

Receiving updates from upstream

Whenever we update KOAN's repo, you can just fetch the changes and merge them into your project with git.

Testing

You can run all the tests with npm test. Tests are run with:

  • Client (unit): Jasmine + Karma (Angular default)
  • Client (e2e): Jasmine + Protractor (Angular default)
  • Server: Mocha/SuperTest/Should (Koa default)

Credits

Client side is entirely based on: Angular Seed. Server side simply utilizes generally accepted Koa middleware and Node.js best practices.

The Name

The project name is an acronym for Koa, Angular, and Node. It also is the name for a Zen Buddhist riddle used to focus the mind during meditation and to develop intuitive thinking.

License

MIT