iron

A command line scaffolding tool for Meteor applications. It automatically creates project structure, files and boilerplate code.

Installation

Install the iron command line tool globally so you can use it from any project directory.

$ npm install -g iron-meteor

This replaces the em command line tool.

You can remove the meteor-em tool like this:

$ npm uninstall -g meteor-em

You can upgrade an existing project either by hande or by using the migrate command like this:

./my-app

$ iron migrate

Usage

Use the help command to get a list of the top level commands.

$ iron help

Use the g command to see a list of generators.

$ iron g

Run Iron in verbose mode (extended logging)

$ IRON_DEBUG=true iron

Directory Structure

The application will have the following directory structure:

my-app/
 .iron/
   config.json
 bin/
 build/
 config/
   development/
     env.sh
     settings.json
 app/
   client/
     collections/
     lib/
     stylesheets/
     templates/
     head.html
   lib/
     collections/
     controllers/
     methods.js
     routes.js
   packages/
   private/
   public/
   server/
     collections/
     lib/
     methods.js
     publish.js
     bootstrap.js

Generators

$ iron g:scaffold todos
$ iron g:template todos/todo_item
$ iron g:collection todos
$ iron g:route webhooks/stripe --where "server"
$ iron g:controller todos/show_todo
$ iron g:route todos/show_todo --action "show"
$ iron g:publish todos
$ iron g:stylesheet main
$ iron g:package package:name

Commands

Create an Application

$ iron create my-app

The following parameters can be specified:

--css=css|scss|less
--js=js|coffee|es6
--html=html|jade
--skip-template-css=true|false
--skip-template-js=true|false
--skip-template-html=true|false
--skip-iron-router
--skip-route-controller
--skip-route-template
--skip-generator-comments

NOTE

Implementing complete customization and configuration is high on the development priority list. See the Github issue if you'd like to contribute.

Run Your Application

$ iron run

This will automatically load your config/development/env.sh and config/development/settings.json files.

Run the Application with a Different Environment

$ iron run --env=staging

This will use the config files in config/staging instead.

Debug Your Application on the Server Side

$ iron debug

Build Your Application

$ iron build

Connect to MongoDB Database

$ cd app/
$ meteor mongo

NOTE

Ideally running iron mongo in the project directory should work but it doesn't for some reason and is being tracked in issue #136

Deployment

Deploy Your Application with Meteor Up

Meteor Up is a command line tool to deploy any Meteor app to your own server.

Configure Meteor Up

The following configuration options are supported in config.json:

"mup": {
  "version": "mup" or "mupx",
  "environment": "/path/to/environment"
}

Initialize Meteor Up

Use iron mup to run Meteor Up commands. To create a mup.json file for an environment run:

iron mup <environment> --init

IMPORTANT

Your mup.json file must contain "enableUploadProgressBar": false to work with Iron.

Create Meteor Up Server

After configuring mup.json, the server can be bootstrapped with a single command:

iron mup <environment> --setup

Deploy to Meteor Up Environment

  'iron mup development' //deploy to development environment
  'iron mup dev' // shortcut for development
  'iron mup production'
  'iron mup prod'
  'iron mup <custom-from-config>'

Deploy Your Application on Heroku

Iron projects require buildpacks to look for the app in /app/ in addition to the root for deployments to work. Currently there is a patched version of the Horse buildpack available that is compatible with Iron based projects. Use this fork until the patches has been added to the main Horse repo.

$ heroku config:set BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/lirbank/meteor-buildpack-horse.git

This will build your application and put the resulting bundle into the project's build folder.

Meteor Commands

Meteor commands will automatically be proxied to the meteor command line tool.

Contributing

Contributions and ideas are welcome.

Tests

To run tests

npm test

License

MIT