NgEngine

NgEngine is an environment/plugin configuration module that supports NGRX. Checkout the boilerplate here.

NgEngine and NgPacks

From our time spent working on Fabrix, we've really enjoyed some of the design patters, specifically Trailpacks. We're bringing that to Angular. With NgPacks you can register all of your modular components and more, even if they are lazy loaded without loosing performance. The other thing that we love about Fabrix is it's configuration concept. With NgEngine, you now have environment driven configuration for all your NgPacks.

Configuration

.angular-cli.json

You will need to update the cli to use the NgEngine config by modifying your .angular-cli.json file.

...
"environmentSource": "appConfig/environment.ts",
"environments": {
  "dev": "appConfig/environment.ts",
  "staging": "appConfig/env/staging/index.ts",
  "testing": "appConfig/env/testing/index.ts",
  "prod": "appConfig/env/production/index.ts"
}
...

Next you will need import the module and add a new provider. NgEngine exposes an injection token that can be used to provide configuration.

//app.module.ts
...
providers: [
  {
    provide: ENGINE_CONFIG,
    useValue: {
      appConfig: appConfig
    }
  }
],
...

Anatomy of an NgPack

• index.ts
• package.json
• *.router.ts
• *.module.ts
• *.module.spec.ts
• containers
  • components
• services
• guards
• config
  • index.ts
  • *.ts
• store
  • index.ts
  • actions
  • effects
  • reducers

appConfig

Angular configuration can be very strange at times and this leads to many developers just hard coding variables when they should be configurable. NgEngine solves this by providing an environment driven approach to configuration and uses the Map functionality of ES6.

index.ts

The index barrel exports the configuration

main.ts

Main exports the packs.

environment.ts

export const environment = {
  development: true,
  staging: false,
  testing: false,
  production: false,
  APP_BASE_HREF: 'http://localhost:3000'
}

env

Exports the environment specific configuration.

Structure:

• testing
  • index.ts
• staging
  • index.ts
• production
  • index

The index barrel of the any env must specify the environments and whether they are true or false just like the environment.ts file. In addition, you can specify pack overrides!

// staging/index.ts
import { app } from './app'
export const environment = {
  development: false,
  staging: true,
  testing: false,
  production: false,
  app: app
}

Example

Let's say you have an app component, and you want to set some environment specific values, and that you also want to be able to share those values between different components, even if they are lazy loaded. Normally you would need to create some sort of service, do a bunch of injection and pray that you did it right.

With NgPacks, you set up your configuration for your component and then you can access it any other component through NgEngineService.

ngService.config.get('app.title')

Through NgService you have access to the config method. Using dot syntax, you can ask the service for a value that may or may not exists with ease and confidence. So instead of something like:

// NOT SO GOOD
if (app && app.metadata && app.metadata.page1 && app.metadata.page1.title)

You can just query the config map:

// GOOD
if (ngSerice.config.get('app.metadata.page1.title'))

In addition, you can set default configs in your Packs and then override them through appConfig/<pack-name>.ts and additionally set overrides those based on your environment through appConifg/env/<environment>/<pack-name>.ts.

Configuring your Application

Boilerplate

Sometimes it's easier to see how it's done. Checkout NgEngine-boilerplate.

Fabrix

For Fabrix documentation see the Fabrix Website. The only difference is that we are extending fabrix with Typescript and bundling it with webpack. You can configure Fabrix through src/apiConfig.

Angular

For Angular documentation see the Angular Website. You can configure your NgEngine Angular app through src/appConfig.

Development

Fabrix server

run npm run build && node dist/server.js for the fabrix server to start. Navigate to http://localhost:3000/

Development server

Run ng serve for a dev server. Navigate to http://localhost:4200/. The app will automatically reload if you change any of the source files.

Run npm start for a dev server that expects the API server at http://localhost:3000.

Code scaffolding

Run ng generate component component-name to generate a new component. You can also use ng generate directive|pipe|service|class|guard|interface|enum|module.

Quick Build

Run ng build to build the project. The build artifacts will be stored in the dist/ directory. Use the -prod flag for a production build.

Alternatively run npm run build. The build artifacts will be stored in the dist/ directory.

Production Build

Run npm run serve:prod:ngsw for a production build with Service Workers and PWA. To just build the service worker build, run npm run build:prod:ngsw and then start it with node dist/server

Run npm run build:prod for a production build. The build artifacts will be stored in the dist/ directory. To start the server run node dist/server.

Running CI tests

Run npm test to execute the unit test, end to end tests, and mocha spec test for node.js.

Running unit tests

Run ng test or npm run test:ng to execute the unit tests via Karma. To continuously run unit tests, run npm run test:ng:watch

Running end-to-end tests

Run ng e2e or npm run test:e2e to execute the end-to-end tests via Protractor.

Deploying to Heroku

First you will need to create a Heroku app. The package.json includes a "heroku-postbuild" script that will build the app. The Procfile includes the location to start the node server which will serve the app on Heroku.

Known Issues

The Fabrix REPL (trailpack-repl) includes some characters that production webpack builds (webpack -p) can not parse and fails during the uglify process. Currently, we use the normal webpack build which is faster but has a larger slug. If you can fix this, we would love a PR!

Further help

To get more help on the Angular CLI use ng help or go check out the Angular CLI README.