Node.js Express Boilerplate

Node.js Express Boilerplate provides you with an initial server to help you get underway with your projects.

What's Included?

Aside from Express support, this package also has functionality for rendering pug (jade) views and compiling sass to CSS through the use of gulp.

Getting Started

To get started using Node.js Express Boilerplate, you will need to run the following commands:

$ npm install -g gulp
$ git clone https://github.com/nerdenough/js-express-boilerplate.git
$ npm install

Sass stylesheets located within the sass directory, can be compiled by running either gulp (which will also start watching the directory) or gulp sass.

Once all the packages are installed, you can start the server by running npm start. This will start the server listening on port 3000 unless specified otherwise.

File Structure

The following tree illustrates how Node.js Express Boilerplate has setup your file structure. Not all folders have been created, but the file structure should explain where you should place your files (unless you choose to change the structure).

.
├── public
│   ├── css
│   │   └── # compiled stylesheets will be placed here
├── sass
│   └── # sass files should be placed here
├── routes
│   └── index.js
├── views
│   ├── index
│   │   └── index.pug
│   ├── shared
│   │   ├── head.pug
│   │   └── layout.pug
│   └── error.pug
└── server.js

/public

Public is a directory should contain any files you want visible to the public, such as stylesheets, JavaScript and images.

/sass

The stylus directory should hold all your .scss files. The server has been setup to compile the files from this directory into /public/css upon running the gulp command.

/routes

Routes should contain all your router specific files.

/views

Views should contain all of your pug views. The structure provided is just an example of how your views could be laid out.