Development Boilerplate

This application includes the basics of an Express app that can be used as a starting point to build many common types of web applications, whether it's a site, an API, or a progressive web app. It also creates a dist/ folder with compiled front-end code ready for distribution either as a static web app or to be turned into a progressive web app (using Electron or some other purpose).

Key Folders:

• bin/ - a place for scripts. The www file starts the web server and app.js.
• data/ - the place to put controller functions that fetch data from your models for either your UI routes or your API.
• routes/ - contains all of your routes
• src/ - contains your Pug views, SCSS, and ES6 javascript, which is compiled to a dist/ folder
• dist/ - contains files compiled fromsrc/ in HTML, CSS, and browser-compatible Javascript. Contains an assets/ folder for images, videos, files, etc.
• test/ - contains mocha unit test scripts

If your views will not be pre-compiled for distribution, you can delete the code that compiles the HTML and just use src/pug as your views/ folder.

How to Run

• install: npm install
• start: npm start
• test: npm test

Key files:

• app.js - contains the main application code
• gulpfile.js - contains all the automated compilation code
• server.sh - uses node supervisor to run the application so it restarts when changes are made to files not in dist/