neodym IDE (alpha)

With the neodym IDE it is possible to easily create app projects using the Ionic SDK. A lot of built in and automatically configured tools help to improve your code quality and speed up most of the manual steps coming along with developing an app.

The neodym IDE is developed using NW.js and therefore working on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The whole source code is written in JavaScript using AngularJS. Up to now there is only a Windows version available, but a Linux and Mac version will follow soon.

The idea of the neodym IDE is based on my (Verena Zaiser) master thesis written at aaronprojects GmbH (Germany) dealing with the "design and implementation of an IDE for an improved development workflow for Ionic-based multi-platform apps". We will be really excited if this project is accepted and pushed by the community, therefore we decided to start an open-source project based on this idea and current implemented version. We would love to welcome you in our hopefully growing community and appreciate every helping hand. Of course we are still working on the project as well!

Please contact us if you have ANY! questions =)!

Functionality

Create a new app project including all configuration

A new app project can easily be created by entering a name and a target directory as well as selecting a predefined Ionic template. Afterwards a template including all setup and configuration files will be downloaded and all dependencies will automatically be installed.

Switch between your app projects

In the project overview all app projects created with neodym are listed and can be opened to work on them.

Edit your app settings

Editing your settings is now possible via interface.

Manage your components easily via interface

Lots of components need to be created to implement the app logic within the source code. Building up a basic structure often needs a lot of time. Therefore the component manager will be introduced. It allows to create/edit and delete components as comfortable as possible. As neodym IDE tries to support you with testing, each created component also generates a matching test file.

Run often used tasks and create new tasks

A lot of tasks need to be run very often. This always needs manual command prompt input and also requires remembering the commands. With neodym this gets replaced by the task manager which comes with predefined basic tasks or allows to customize tasks yourself. Each task can be started (and stopped) via click.

Check your code quality by running a code analysis powered by JSHint

To get some hints on syntax errors, possible bugs or violating some conventions the code analysis manager helps to run JSHint and displays the results.

Manage your libraries

Adding new libraries can easily be done by providing an URL of the JavaScript file or uploading a file from your hard disk. All used libraries will be listed in the library overview and automatically be referenced in the index.html file. It is also possible to remove the libraries completely from the project by clicking on a button.

Search for plugins and manage them easily using the plugin manager

Maintaining plugins via the command prompt is really hard and time consuming. That's why I built a plugin manager which provides an overview about all installed plugins and tells you which plugin can be updated. Also searching for plugins and displaying the results as well as installing or uninstalling them via click is possible.

Run your tests and have a look at your code coverage

A testing environment using Karma as the test runner and Jasmine as the testing framework is preinstalled and preconfigured by creating a new app project. Runnning tests is really easy by clicking on the "run" button in the test manager view. The results will be displayed using the karma-htmlfile-reporter as well as a code coverage using istanbul. Hopefully this will motivate you to write and run some unit tests =)!

Release your app easily

in progress

Installation

The Ionic SDK has to be successfully installed and configured to use the neodym IDE. If you are not familiar with Ionic, please have a look at its official documentation.

Node.js, npm and Git have to be installed as well. If you discover other dependencies which are not mentioned here, please let me know.

Afterwards you only need to download the .zip package and extract it to your desired location. Then please open the command prompt, navigate into the directory and run (only needed for the first start of the IDE):

npm install

This will download all needed dependencies and may take a while. After this is finished you can start the IDE by running the "neodym-ide.exe".

A packaged version will also be available soon after some issues will be fixed. At the moment it takes horribly long to start the packaged version.

Dependencies

Code analysis is powered by JSHint. Karma is used as the test runner. Jasmine is used as the testing framework. Istanbul is used to generate the code coverage.

The existing templates from Ionic (blank, sidemenu, tabs) are used and extended by a basic component structure, a grunt and a karma configuration file. These templates are also available on github. Feel free to improve them!

neodym-blank-template neodym-sidemenu-template neodym-tabs-template

Upcoming features and changes

Currently only available for Windows -> will be available for Linux and Mac OS X soon
Import of existing Ionic projects
Choosing between different code structures (currently: order by component type, additionally: order by function)

Known issues

Please let us know about your discovered issues!

Support us

Join the open source community

Hopefully some people are interested in joining this project to build up a good working software. Please contact us (directly via GitHub or e-mail) if you are interested in helping me =)!

Make a donation

Coming soon

FAQ