This template is a starting point for building apps using a drawer-based
layout. The layout is provided by app-layout
elements.
This template, along with the polymer-cli
toolchain, also demonstrates use
of the "PRPL pattern" This pattern allows fast first delivery and interaction with
the content at the initial route requested by the user, along with fast subsequent
navigation by pre-caching the remaining components required by the app and
progressively loading them on-demand as the user navigates through the app.
The PRPL pattern, in a nutshell:
- Push components required for the initial route
- Render initial route ASAP
- Pre-cache components for remaining routes
- Lazy-load and progressively upgrade next routes on-demand
Also have a custom gulp process leveraging polymer-build, the library powering Polymer CLI.
First, install Polymer CLI and generator-polymer-init-custom-build using npm (we assume you have pre-installed node.js).
npm install -g polymer-cli
npm install -g generator-polymer-init-custom-build
Second, install Bower using npm
npm install -g bower
mkdir my-app
cd my-app
polymer init polymer-starter-kit-custom-build
This command serves the app at http://127.0.0.1:8081
and provides basic URL
routing for the app:
polymer serve
The included gulpfile.js
relies on the polymer-build
library,
the same library that powers Polymer CLI. Out of the box it will clean the
build
directory, and provide image minification. Follow the comments in the
gulpfile.js
to add additional steps like JS transpilers or CSS preprocessors.
gulpfile.js
also generates a service-worker.js
file with code to pre-cache
the dependencies based on the entrypoint and fragments specified in
polymer.json
.
npm run build
This command serves your app.
polymer serve build/
This command will run Web Component Tester against the browsers currently installed on your machine:
polymer test
If running Windows you will need to set the following environment variables:
- LAUNCHPAD_BROWSERS
- LAUNCHPAD_CHROME
Read More here daffl/launchpad
The gulpfile.js
already contains an example build step that demonstrates how
to run image minification across your source files. For more examples, refer to
the section in the polymer-build README on extracting inline sources.
You can extend the app by adding more views that will be demand-loaded
e.g. based on the route, or to progressively render non-critical sections of the
application. Each new demand-loaded fragment should be added to the list of
fragments
in the included polymer.json
file. This will ensure those
components and their dependencies are added to the list of pre-cached components
and will be included in the build.