robgiffin / distribu

Sync the City Hackathon 2018

Distribu

The demo is written as a node app, with a thin client written in handlebars and styling written with sass.

To get started/setup:

1. Run node -v and ensure you have at least node v9.6.0 installed.
2. Run npm install --dev to install all the npm package dependencies. When installing in production omit the --dev flag.
3. Install aurelia-cli which is required to run the aurelia bits: npm install aurelia-cli -g
4. Install gulp which is required to run builds: npm install -g gulp
5. Run gulp from the root of the checked out repo.

Gulp tasks

lint

Lints all js files. Check .eslintrc.json for the rules it uses when linting.

sass

Compiles content/scss/main.scss to content/css/main.css. Simples.

server

Starts the node server, as setup in app.js, using nodemon. Watches the following files, and on change will re-run the server:

• app.js
• api/**/*.js

start-au-cli

Runs au run which is an aurelia-cli command, this in turns watches the src folder and will transcompile all js and html file changes into /content/dist. For more information on these tasks check out:

• The /aurelia_project directory that holds the gulp tasks specific to aurelia.
• aurelia-cli documentation here.

watch-sass

Watches all scss files in /content/scss and executes the sass task (detailed above) on a file change.

default

Runs all of the above, in parallel.

FAQs

How do I run the server up in IIS?

See https://www.simplymigrate.com/2017/04/11/internet-information-server-iis-node-js-in-producton-iisnode/.

How do I run on port 80?

The simplest solution is to run the node app on port 80 by passing in the port number. If this isn't available/is reserved then you can use any of the following solutions.

Windows

See https://adamtuttle.codes/add-node-to-existing-iis-server/

Linux

sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3000

MacOS

sudo ipfw add 1 forward 127.0.0.1,3000 ip from any to any 80 in

Keeping the node server "alive"

Wondering how to keep the node server up if it ever crashes out for any reason?

1. Install forever globally on the server using npm install forever -g
2. Run forever start app.js
3. To view the list of processes running forever run forever list in your terminal
4. To stop a forever process run forever stop {index-from-list}