Studenthem, need I say more?
Before you begin we recommend you read about the basic building blocks that assemble a MEAN application:
- MongoDB - Go through MongoDB Official Website and proceed to their Official Manual, which should help you understand NoSQL and MongoDB better.
- Express - The best way to understand express is through its Official Website, which has a Getting Started guide, as well as an ExpressJS Guide guide for general express topics. You can also go through this StackOverflow Thread for more resources.
- AngularJS - Angular's Official Website is a great starting point. You can also use Thinkster Popular Guide, and the Egghead Videos.
- Node.js - Start by going through Node.js Official Website and this StackOverflow Thread, which should get you going with the Node.js platform in no time.
Make sure you have installed all these prerequisites on your development machine.
- Node.js - Download & Install Node.js and the npm package manager, if you encounter any problems, you can also use this GitHub Gist to install Node.js.
- MongoDB - Download & Install MongoDB, and make sure it's running on the default port (27017).
- Bower - You're going to use the Bower Package Manager to manage your front-end packages, in order to install it make sure you've installed Node.js and npm, then install bower globally using npm:
$ npm install -g bower
- Grunt - You're going to use the Grunt Task Runner to automate your development process, in order to install it make sure you've installed Node.js and npm, then install grunt globally using npm:
$ sudo npm install -g grunt-cli
Once you've installed all the prerequisites, you're just a few steps away from starting to develop you MEAN application.
The first thing you should do is install the Node.js dependencies. The boilerplate comes pre-bundled with a package.json file that contains the list of modules you need to start your application, to learn more about the modules installed visit the NPM & Package.json section.
To install Node.js dependencies you're going to use npm again, in the application folder run this in the command-line:
$ npm install
This command does a few things:
- First it will install the dependencies needed for the application to run.
- If you're running in a development environment, it will then also install development dependencies needed for testing and running your application.
- Finally, when the install process is over, npm will initiate a bower install command to install all the front-end modules needed for the application
After the install process is over, you'll be able to run your application using Grunt, just run grunt default task:
$ grunt
Your application should run on the 3000 port so in your browser just go to http://localhost:3000
That's it! your application should be running by now, to proceed with your development check the other sections in this documentation. If you encounter any problem try the Troubleshooting section.
$ fig up
- Local development and testing with just Docker:
$ docker build -t mean .
$ docker run -p 27017:27017 -d --name db mongo
$ docker run -p 3000:3000 --link db:db_1 mean
$
- To enable live reload forward 35729 port and mount /app and /public as volumes:
$ docker run -p 3000:3000 -p 35729:35729 -v /Users/mdl/workspace/mean-stack/mean/public:/home/mean/public -v /Users/mdl/workspace/mean-stack/mean/app:/home/mean/app --link db:db_1 mean
To run your application in a secure manner you'll need to use OpenSSL and generate a set of self-signed certificates. Unix-based users can use the following commnad:
$ sh generate-ssl-certs.sh
Windows users can follow instructions found here To generate the key and certificate and place them in the config/sslcert folder.