We use a number of node.js tools to initialize and test the app. You must have node.js and its package manager (npm) installed. You can get them from http://nodejs.org/.
We have two kinds of dependencies in this project: tools and angular framework code. The tools help us manage and test the application.
- We get the tools we depend upon via
npm, the [node package manager][npm]. - We get the angular code via
bower, a [client-side code package manager][bower].
We have preconfigured npm to automatically run bower so we can simply do:
npm install
Behind the scenes this will also call bower install. You should find that you have two new
folders in your project.
node_modules- contains the npm packages for the tools we needapp/libs- contains the angular framework files
Note that the bower_components folder would normally be installed in the root folder but
we change this location through the .bowerrc file as well as its name to be libs. Putting it in the app folder makes it easier to serve the files by a webserver.
We have preconfigured the project with a simple development web server. The simplest way to start this server is:
npm start
Now browse to the app at http://localhost:8000/app/index.html.
You can update the tool dependencies by running:
npm update
This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the package.json file.
You can update the Angular dependencies by running:
bower update
This will find the latest versions that match the version ranges specified in the bower.json file.
While angular is client-side-only technology and it's possible to create angular webapps that
don't require a backend server at all, we recommend serving the project files using a local
webserver during development to avoid issues with security restrictions (sandbox) in browsers. The
sandbox implementation varies between browsers, but quite often prevents things like cookies, xhr,
etc to function properly when an html page is opened via file:// scheme instead of http://.