Yeoman generator for MEAN stack projects

Introduction

MEAN stack defines application using MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS and NodeJS for a full Javascript development. This generator will help you to start with a solid base, which permits you to code faster. Some usual tasks are handled in sub-generators too.

Prerequisites

To use the generator, you need some prerequisites :

• Node.js with NPM
• MongoDB (only needed if you want to use a local database, you could use a MongoDB web service like Mongolab too, but for development purpose it could be useful to have a local database)
• Yo - This package manage all Yeoman's generators

$ npm install -g yo

• Bower - Bower will manage your frontend dependencies

$ npm install -g bower

• Grunt - Grunt will automate some tasks to build your app or check if there's no error in your code.

$ npm install -g grunt-cli

Please make sure to read the documentation of these packages before starting your MEAN project. You also need to know basics about Express, AngularJS, Mongoose and Passport.

Installation

Install the generator

$ npm install -g generator-mean-stack

Make a new directory and cd into it

$ mkdir -p mean-project && cd $_

Scaffold a new MEAN stack project

yo mean-stack

Note: If you want to test user authentication in the new generated project, you need to leave ngRoute, ngCookies and nodemailer

You also need Bootstrap and Font Awesome to get the good demo project style

Generators

Available generators:

• mean-stack (or mean-stack:app)
• mean-stack:bRoute
• mean-stack:bModel (coming soon)
• mean-stack:fRoute (coming soon)

Note: Generators are to be run from the app root directory

App

Sets up a new MEAN stack app, generating all the boilerplate you need to get started.

Example:

$ yo mean-stack

bRoute

Sets up a new route in Express router (located in app/backend/router/routes dir).

You can choose if the route has a restricted access (only for users) and if you want a ready CRUD template.

Example:

$ yo mean-stack:bRoute

Note: CRUD will create a route AND start the bModel sub-generator to set up a new Mongoose model

If you want to skip bModel generator, use the --skip-model option.

$ yo mean-stack:bRoute --skip-model

bModel

Create a new Mongoose model (located in app/backend/models dir).

Suggestion: If you have to make a new route too, use yo mean-stack:bRoute instead

Example:

$ yo mean-stack:bModel

Serve and build

The generator makes a gruntfile configuration, so building your app becomes easy.

Build a fresh new distribution :

$ grunt

Run the app server in development mode :

$ grunt serve

You can define a production target to serve in production mode :

grunt serve:production

Note: this last command builds automatically a new distribution before serving.

Deployment

Make sure to test your final distribution with Grunt :

$ grunt serve:production

The final distribution is located in /build directory.

$ cd build

Everything you need is here, you can init a git repo here and push your build :

git init && git remote add origin pathToYourProductionServer && git commit -am "Build 1.0.0" && git push origin master

Note: Make sure to configure your .gitignore file inside /build directory to match with your production server specifications.

Note2: .git folder and .gitignore file won't be overwritten during new build, but you can add other files too in Gruntfile.js configuration.

MEAN-Stack Example

Coming soon...

License

MIT License