ionic-template - advanced template for Ionic apps

This project extends the starter project for ionic apps provided by Ionic team. It also bases on an awesome John Papa's style guide. It is an application template for a typical Ionic web app. You can use it to quickly bootstrap your angular web app projects and dev environment for these projects.

The template contains a sample Ionic application and is preconfigured to install the Ionic framework and a bunch of development and testing tools for instant web development gratification.

Online Demo

You can go to following website, to see app preview: https://ionic-template.herokuapp.com

Getting Started

To get you started you can simply clone the ionic-template repository and install the dependencies.

Prerequisites

You need git to clone the ionic-template repository. You can get git from http://git-scm.com/.

We also use a number of node.js tools to initialize and test ionic-template. You must have node.js and its package manager (npm) installed. You can get them from http://nodejs.org/.

Clone ionic-template

Clone the ionic-template repository using git:

git clone https://github.com/pamigomp/ionic-template.git
cd ionic-template

If you just want to start a new project without the ionic-template commit history then you can do:

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/pamigomp/ionic-template.git <your-project-name>

The depth=1 tells git to only pull down one commit worth of historical data.

Install with npm

You can also install ionic-template with npm:

npm install ionic-template
cd node_modules/ionic-template

Install Dependencies

Firstly, make sure you have bower, grunt-cli, karma-cli, ionic and cordova installed globally. To do this run:

npm install -g bower grunt-cli karma-cli ionic cordova

We have two kinds of dependencies in this project: tools and angular framework code. The tools help us manage and test the application.

• We get the tools we depend upon via npm, the node package manager.
• We get the angular code via bower, the client-side code package manager.

We have preconfigured npm to automatically run bower so we can simply do:

npm install

Behind the scenes this will also call bower install. You should find that you have two new folders in your project.

• node_modules - contains the npm packages for the tools we need
• www/bower_components - contains the angular framework files

Note that the bower_components folder would normally be installed in the root folder but ionic-template changes this location through the .bowerrc file. Putting it in the app folder makes it easier to serve the files by a webserver.

Run the Application

We have preconfigured the project with a simple development web server. The simplest way to start this server is:

npm start

Now browse to the app at http://localhost:8000.

Directory Layout

build/                              --> minified JavaScript files
coverage/                           --> coverage reports
dist/                               --> concatenated JavaScript files
hooks/                              --> Cordova lifecycle hooks
node_modules/                       --> the npm packages for the tools we need
platforms/                          --> targeted operating systems
plugins/                            --> native plugins
protractor-test-results/            --> e2e tests results
resources/                          --> placeholder icons and splashscreens
tests/                              --> tests scenarios
  e2e/                                  --> end-to-end tests
  unit/                                 --> unit tests
unit-test-results/                  --> unit tests results
www/                                --> all of the source files for the application
  assets/                               --> other application files
    css/                                  --> custom styles
    data/                                 --> custom data
    fonts/                                --> custom fonts
    images/                               --> custom images
    js/                                   --> custom JavaScript files
    libs/                                 --> custom libraries
  bower_components/                     --> the angular framework files
  common/                               --> common application files
    constants/                              --> custom angular constants    
    directives/                             --> custom angular directives    
    filters/                                --> custom angular filters
  core/                                 --> main application files
    app.js                                  --> main application module
    app.routes.js                           --> main application routes
  index.html                            --> app layout file (the main html template file of the app)
.bowerrc                            --> bower options file
.gitignore                          --> git ignore file
.jscsrc                             --> JSCS options file
.jshintrc                           --> JSHint options file
.travis.yml                         --> Travis CI config file
Gruntfile.js                        --> Grunt config file
Procfile                            --> define command which starts app
app.json                            --> web application details file
bower.json                          --> runtime dependencies of the project
config.xml                          --> Cordova config file
karma.conf.js                       --> Karma config file (for unit tests)
package.json                        --> development dependencies of the project
protractor-conf.js                  --> Protractor config file (for e2e tests)
server.js                           --> server config file

Testing

There are two kinds of tests in the ionic-template application: Unit tests and End to End tests.

Running Unit Tests

The ionic-template app comes preconfigured with unit tests. These are written in Jasmine, which we run with the Karma Test Runner. We provide a Karma configuration file to run them.

• the configuration is found at karma.conf.js
• the unit test files (specs) are placed side-by-side with client code: app/**/*Spec.js.

The easiest way to run the unit tests is to use the supplied npm script:

npm test

This script will start the Karma test runner to execute the unit tests. Moreover, Karma will sit and watch the source and test files for changes and then re-run the tests whenever any of them change. This is the recommended strategy; if your unit tests are being run every time you save a file then you receive instant feedback on any changes that break the expected code functionality.

You can also ask Karma to do a single run of the tests and then exit. This is useful if you want to check that a particular version of the code is operating as expected. The project contains a predefined script to do this:

npm run test-single-run

End to end testing

The ionic-template app comes with end-to-end tests, again written in Jasmine. These tests are run with the Protractor End-to-End test runner. It uses native events and has special features for Angular applications.

• the configuration is found at protractor.conf.js
• the end-to-end tests are found in tests/e2e/scenarios.js

Protractor simulates interaction with our web app and verifies that the application responds correctly. Therefore, our web server needs to be serving up the application, so that Protractor can interact with it.

npm start

In addition, since Protractor is built upon WebDriver we need to install this. The ionic-template project comes with a predefined script to do this:

npm run update-webdriver

This will download and install the latest version of the stand-alone WebDriver tool.

Once you have ensured that the development web server hosting our application is up and running and WebDriver is updated, you can run the end-to-end tests using the supplied npm script:

npm run protractor

This script will execute the end-to-end tests against the application being hosted on the development server.

Updating Angular

Previously we recommended that you merge in changes to ionic-template into your own fork of the project. Now that the angular framework library code and tools are acquired through package managers (npm and bower) you can use these tools instead to update the dependencies.

You can update the tool dependencies by running:

npm update

This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the package.json file.

You can update the Angular dependencies by running:

bower update

This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the bower.json file.

Serving the Application Files

While angular is client-side-only technology and it's possible to create angular webapps that don't require a backend server at all, we recommend serving the project files using a local webserver during development to avoid issues with security restrictions (sandbox) in browsers. The sandbox implementation varies between browsers, but quite often prevents things like cookies, xhr, etc to function properly when an html page is opened via file:// scheme instead of http://.

Running the App during Development

The ionic-template project comes preconfigured with a local development webserver. You can start this webserver with:

npm start

Alternatively, you can choose to configure your own webserver, such as apache or nginx. Just configure your server to serve the files under the app/ directory.

Running the App in Production

This really depends on how complex your app is and the overall infrastructure of your system, but the general rule is that all you need in production are all the files under the app/ directory. Everything else should be omitted.

Angular apps are really just a bunch of static html, css and js files that just need to be hosted somewhere they can be accessed by browsers.

If your Angular app is talking to the backend server via xhr or other means, you need to figure out what is the best way to host the static files to comply with the same origin policy if applicable. Usually this is done by hosting the files by the backend server or through reverse-proxying the backend server(s) and webserver(s).

Continuous Integration

Travis CI

Travis CI is a continuous integration service, which can monitor GitHub for new commits to your repository and execute scripts such as building the app or running tests. The ionic-template project contains a Travis configuration file, .travis.yml, which will cause Travis to run your tests when you push to GitHub.

You will need to enable the integration between Travis and GitHub. See the Travis website for more instruction on how to do this.

Cloud

Heroku

Heroku is a platform as a service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, deliver, monitor, scale and run applications entirely in the cloud. It is supporting several programming languages.

You will need to enable the integration between Heroku and GitHub. See the Heroku website for more instruction on how to do this.

Automation tool

Grunt

Grunt is a JavaScript task runner for improving front-end development workflow. With the use of a number of grunt plugins you can automate repetitive tasks such as minification, compilation, unit testing or linting.

Tasks

The following list of tasks is preconfigured in Gruntfile.js file:

• grunt jshint

  Validate JavaScript code using predefined checking options located in .jshintrc file.

• grunt jscs

  Validate JavaScript code using predefined checking options located in .jscsrc file.

• grunt concat

  Concatenate JavaScript files and put them to dist/ directory.

• grunt uglify

  Minify JavaScript files and put them to build/ directory.

• grunt watch

  Run concat, uglify, jshint or jscs tasks whenever watched file patterns are added, changed or deleted.

• grunt protractor

  Run e2e tests with protractor.

• grunt karma

  Run unit tests with karma.

• grunt default

  Run tasks in the following order: jshint:all, jscs:all, karma:singleRun, concat, uglify:concat.

License

The MIT License, Copyright (c) 2016 Michal Pietrzak