Bootstrap Backbone Starter Generator

Yeoman generator for Bootstrap Starter Template with Backbone.JS. It is the fastest way to start with a Bootstrap project that implements Backbone.JS's Model-View-Router model.

You also get a fully automated document creation from source code, automatic updating of your final webapp name and version in README.md, and an html version of your README.md file.

Quick Installation

Install yo, and generator-bootstrap-backbone-starter:

npm install -g yo generator-bootstrap-backbone-starter --verbose

Usage

Make a new directory, and cd into it:

mkdir my-new-project && cd $_

Run yo bootstrap-backbone-starter:

yo bootstrap-backbone-starter

Variables the generator uses

• generatorWebappName: Webapp Name. The generator will try to generate a proper name with dashes from this name.
• generatorWebappNameWithDashes: (Generated but can be changed) Derived name from webapp name, used as your webapp's name in package.json.
• generatorWebappDescription: Webapp Description. Goes into package.json of your project.
• generatorUserEmail: Your email. Goes into package.json file and all the copyright notices in your source files.
• generatorUserName: Your name. Goes into package.json file and all the copyright notices in your source files.
• generatorUserGithubName: Your github account name. Goes into package.json file.
• generatorWebappWebsite: The website for your webapp. You may want to register this thru a domain registrar.

Questions that the generator asks

• 'What is your webapp's name ?': sets 'generatorWebappName'
• 'What is your webapp's dasherized name ? Will use this as the main webapp name': sets 'generatorWebappNameWithDashes'
• 'What is your webapp's main exported class ?': sets 'generatorWebappClass'.
• 'What is your webapp's description ?': sets 'generatorWebappDescription'.
• 'What is your email ?': sets 'generatorUserEmail'.
• 'What is your name ?': sets 'generatorUserName'.
• 'What is your github username ?': sets 'generatorUserGithubName'.
• 'What is your webapp's own website ?': sets 'generatorWebappWebsite'.

In-depth Explanation

Quick Start

Type:

grunt

This should build your project into dist/ directory. You can type grunt watch and this will continously build your sources into dist/ directory.

In order to test your web app, you can change to dist/ directory and run a simple http server. For example:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

You can now find your webapp at http://localhost:8000.

Scaffolding Explained

In this section, we describe what each file does in this template and how you can modify them to your needs.

Directory Structure

Once everything is installed, you will see a project structure like below:

├── .editorconfig                                # EditorConfig file for unifying settings across multiple editors.
├── .flowconfig                                  # Config file for flow static type checker.
├── .gitignore                                   # Config file for git to ignore files.
├── .jscsrc                                      # Config file for jscs coding style checker.
├── Gruntfile.js                                 # File of magic. All grunt tasks are in here.
├── HOW_TO_GUIDE.md                              # This very file.
├── README.md.template                           # Template file for final README.md.
├── assets                                       # Directory which includes all the Bootstrap assets for edge cases.
│   ├── css
│   │   └── ie10-viewport-bug-workaround.css
│   └── js
│       ├── ie-emulation-modes-warning.js
│       ├── ie10-viewport-bug-workaround.js
│       └── ie8-responsive-file-warning.js
├── jsdoc.conf                                   # Configuration file for jsdoc.
├── package.json                                 # NPM package.json file.
└── src                                          # Source files for your webapp.
|   ├── favicon.ico                              # favicon icon file for your webapp.
|   ├── index.html.template                      # Modified version of index.html from Bootstrap Starter Template.
|   ├── models.js                                # Backbone models.
|   ├── router.js                                # Backbone router.
|   ├── starter-template.css                     # Starter template CSS.
└───└── views.js                                 # Backbone views.

./.editorconfig

From their website, "EditorConfig is a file format and collection of text editor plugins for maintaining consistent coding styles between different editors and IDEs." This file has a bunch of settings that various editors can read and adjust their behaviour accordingly. You can read more about it on their website

./.flowconfig

Configuration file for flow type checker. Flow is a static type checker which is helpful in catching null dereferences and unintentional type conversions. You can read more about it on their website.

./.jscsrc

Configuration file for JSCS coding style checks. We use a modified version of Google JS coding style and full JSDoc3 checks.

./Gruntfile.js

This is where all the magic lives. Gruntfile.js describes all the tasks, and how they interact with each other. It can run your tests, create browser version of your tests, run them in the browser, create their coverage reports, create documentation, create your dynamically generated README.md, and README.md.html files and create your final browserified library along with its minimized version.

./jsdoc.conf

JSDoc configuration file. You can modify this file to change the behaviour of JSDoc which is used to create documentation from the source code.

./package.json

NPM package.json file. You describe your webapp in this file. The values for 'name' and 'version' fromthis file are later used in producing README.md file.

./README.md.template

Consumed by Gruntfile's 'replace:readmemd' to produce your app's main README.md file.

./src/models.js, ./src/views.js, ./src/router.js

These three files are the BackboneJS files for our Model-View-Router schema. In the template, they control a button and a simple view to print a simple message when the button is clicked.

./src/favicon.ico

Tiny icon file for your web app.

./src/starter-template.css

Main CSS file.

./src/index.html.template

Main index.html file for your webapp. This file is a template because replace task in Grunt file will replace template variables with the correct values to produce index.html file in your dist/ directory. These variables include @@name, @@author, @@description (which are read from package.json), and the locations of various JS library dependencies such as jquery, backbone, underscore, etc.

./assets/*

All the files under this directory are Bootstrap dependencies that are referenced in the original Bootstrap Starter Template.

Generated Files and Directories

When you run the Grunt tasks, this scaffolding generates a whole bunch of files. They are explained below.

./docs/*

Generated by 'jsdoc' task. All documentation in the src files should follow jsdoc format so that this task can produce all the documentation.

./dist/*

Generated by 'replace', and 'copy'. Your full webapp is under this directory.

./Gruntfile.js and Tasks

Gruntfile.js tasks are closely coupled. Please be careful when you change them.

clean

• clean: docs

Deletes docs.

• clean: external

Deletes js, css and html files that are copied as external dependencies.

• clean:internal

Deletes js, css and html files created by the project itself.

copy

Copies files from various source directories to dist/ directory. Copies external JS libraries from node_webapps directory to dist/, asset files from assets/ to dist/, and js/css/html files from src/ to dist/.

flow

Runs Flow static type checker.

jscs

Runs the code through jscs for coding style checks. This uses a modified version of Google coding style.

jsdoc

Creates documentation from src files using jsdoc.

jshint

Runs the code through jshint.

markdown

Creates an html version of the README.md file called README.md.html.

replace

• replace:dist

Replaces text patterns in index.html.template to produce index.html.

• replace:readmemd

Replaces text patterns in README.md.template to produce README.md.

watch

Runs a continuous task which listens for changes in src/ directory and when there is a change, watch runs the 'default' Grunt task.

Custom Tasks

Gruntfile.js comes with one custom and one default task.

default

Runs 'clean', 'jshint', 'jscs', 'flow', 'copy', 'replace' respectively.

docs (custom task)

Runs 'clean:docs', 'markdown', 'jsdoc' respectively.

'projectparams' section of Gruntfile.js

This section has all the parameters necessary to run the scaffolding correctly. You can change these parameters according to your project's specifics.

Description of the variables in projectparams:

• banner_for_production: The first line for both the browserified output file and the minimized version.
• docs_dir: (Generated) Directory for the docs.
• dist_dir: (Generated) Directory for the full fledged web app.
• readme_md_html_file: (Generated) README.md.html file name.
• readme_md_text_file: (Generated) README.md file name.
• readme_md_template: Template file name for producing README.md.
• src_dir: Directory where source files are located.
• js_dir: Directory where external JS dependencies are copied into under dist_dir
• css_dir: Directory where external CSS dependencies are copied into under dist_dir
• fonts_dir: Directory where external fonts dependencies are copied into under dist_dir

License

Apache 2.0 License - © 2015 Baris Yuksel

Bugs, Requests and Support

For bug reports, feature requests and general questions, please feel free to email [email protected].