Rather than starting from scratch on every project, I would suggest that you create a boilerplate project that you can use to jump start your new projects.

You can build yours from scratch or if you find one that has some of the things you want, then you can fork that project and customize it to get it the rest of the way there.

I’ll walk you through this process as I fork a boilerplate of my own.

Why create a custom boilerplate?

• Get productive on new project quickly
• Favorite settings, tools, dependencies
• Let your mind focus on project at hand

Goals

• Fork existing repo
• Customize some key parts
• Commit and push

Video Info

• Episode: CW V010
• Skill level: Beginner with basic git skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Git skills
• Published: May 1st, 2015
• Tags: js, nodejs,git,npm,free
• Duration: 4:36
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

cd ~/working  # change dir to where clone will be created
# use your ssh git clone url, or others https
git clone git@github.com:codewinds/base-react-min.git
cd base-react-min
# customize files
git status  # see what files have changed
git diff    # see what changed in the files
git commit -a -m "customized for my prefs"
git push origin HEAD  # push back to github

• git-clone-init - npm installable bash script which simplifies process of cloning a boilerplate repo when starting new project, re-initializing git, replacing tokens, and creating initial check in
• codewinds/base-react-min - CodeWinds boilerplate for minimal React.js projects

This video picks up where we left off and we will publish our package to the npm registry so developers can find and install it more easily.

Goals

• Tag version
• Publish in NPM registry
• Install from registry

Video Info

• Episode: CW V009
• Skill level: Beginner with basic git and npm skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Git skills
• Published: September 11th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,git,npm,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 4:44
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

npm add-user  # add registry user account
npm publish   # publish current package to npm
npm info hapi-elapsed  # view info on hapi-elapsed from npm
npm doc hapi-elapsed   # open browser to hapi-elapsed docs

• verify that package installs properly with all the necessary files by creating a new project and doing npm install hapi-elapsed and for more completeness, create an example and use the package.
• hapi-elapsed - repo on GitHub
• npm-adduser - manual page for adduser
• npm-publish - manual page for publish
• npm - npm registry - can perform web search for packages by name or keyword

In the next video

• Update the plugin code for latest Hapi
• Verify tests
• Push updates to GitHub and npm

This video picks up where we left off and we configure travis-ci for our repo so that we can get automated build each time we push to GitHub. Errors will be reported to us automatically.

Goals

• Enable travis-ci for repo
• Trigger build with test hook
• Push change to run build

Video Info

• Episode: CW V008
• Skill level: Beginner with basic git and npm skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Git skills
• Published: July 1st, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,git,travis-ci,ci,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 4:43
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

• Travis-CI - Sign up for free using your GitHub account. The free account allows you to build against your open source public repos. Paid accounts allow building of private repos along with additional features and priority builds.
• .travis.yml contains the configuration for Travis-CI
• Travis runs npm install followed by npm-test to test both the installation of your modules and to run your tests.
• You may configure the versions of Node.js you want to test your project on
• By using Travis-CI builds are run on all the configured versions every time you push to GitHub and errors are emailed back to you or you can view in their dashboard.
• We add the travis-ci image into our README so users can see whether our code is passing tests on all the configured versions of Node.js. The images is also linked so it takes users directly to the Travis-CI dashboard for this project so they can see the history of the project and guage its stability.
• hapi-elapsed - repo on GitHub
• Travis-CI hapi-elapsed dashboard

Example Travis-CI config file

Specifies node_js as the language and we will run against Node.js 0.10 and Node.js 0.11

language: node_js
node_js:
  - "0.10"
  - "0.11"

In the next video

• Tag version
• Publish in NPM registry
• Install from registry

This video picks up where we left off and we create a new GitHub repo and push our local code up to it. We also install our code to a new project directly from the GitHub repo.

Goals

• create new GitHub repo
• push to GitHub
• install from GitHub

Video Info

• Episode: CW V007
• Skill level: Beginner with basic git and npm skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Git skills
• Published: June 26th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,git,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 5:21
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

• We are creating a new GitHub repo and will be using our existing code from our local system to populate the repo.
• Once we push our code to GitHub we will have an exact copy of the local files living there. We can continue to make changes locally and push up commits and all our work will be replicated to the GitHub server.
• With our code on GitHub others can use and review our code and even clone or fork the repository for themselves.
• Since npm supports installation directly from GitHub we can install directly from there (even without publishing to the npm registry), this is great for sharing even when not ready to publish to npm yet.
• There are many ways to install with npm from a git repo
  • npm install manual
  • I prefer using the tarball URL since it is more efficient (the other methods clone the repo which could grow to be very large over time).
  • In practice I also recommend using a tag rather than just installing from master, that way you can control exactly which version you are getting and can selectively choose when to upgrade. You can also use a branch name instead of a tag.

# Various ways to install from GitHub
# install master from tarball
npm install https://github.com/codewinds/hapi-elapsed/archive/master.tar.gz
# install tag v0.0.1 from tarball (my preferred)
npm install https://github.com/codewinds/hapi-elapsed/archive/v0.0.1.tar.gz
npm install codewinds/hapi-elapsed  # installs from github repo
npm install codewinds/hapi-elapsed#v0.0.1  # installs tag v0.0.1
npm install git+ssh://git@github.com:codewinds/hapi-elapased.git#v0.0.1

In the next video

• Enable travis-ci for repo
• Trigger build with test hook
• Push change to run build

bench-rest is built off the shoulders of three fantastic Node.js libraries:

• Mikeal Roger’s request HTTP client
• Caolan McMahon’s async asynchronous utilities
• Felix Geisendörfer’s measured metrics library

In the video I demonstrate bench-rest use as a command line client, but it can also be used programmatically. bench-rest’s flow format for defining the REST operations also allows setup and teardown operations to be performed and actions can be run before or after each operation to further customize or validate the processing.

Goals

• Introduce bench-rest
• Demonstrate single method
• Explain multi-operation flows

Video Info

• Episode: CW V006
• Skill level: Beginner with basic Node.js skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Bash knowledge
• Published: May 26th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,benchmark,REST,free
• Duration: 9:00
• Node.js version: 0.10.25

Notes

npm install -g bench-rest` # install
bench-rest # display help

# single GET
bench-rest http://localhost:3000/foo

# GET 100 times, 10 concurrent
bench-rest -n 100 http://localhost:3000/foo

# GET 100 times, 20 concurrent
bench-rest -n 100 -c 20 http://foo/bar

# run flow defined in my-flow.js 100 times
# with 20 concurrent connections
bench-rest -n 100 -c 20 my-flow.js

This video picks up where we left off and dresses up the plugin with a few more fields that would be nice to have in that log message so we could use them for analysis.

We will add a failing test and them implement the feature for each of the following properties:

• request ID
• HTTP method
• URL
• HTTP response status code
• HTTP response headers

Using Mocha‘s watch feature, you can see how it is easy to bounce back and forth creating tests and implementing the feature without having to leave our editor.

At the end of this video, we have a fully functional Hapijs Elapsed time plugin.

Goals

• Iterate on: id, method, url, status, and headers features
  • adding failing tests
  • implement features

Video Info

• Episode: CW V005
• Skill level: Beginner with basic Node.js skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Mocha test runner knowledge
  • Basic Chai assertion library knowledge
• Published: May 9th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 8:01
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

• We will use a test driven development approach to building our plugin
  • Test runner is Mocha
  • Assertion library is Chaijs
  • Hapijs website
  • Hapijs Plugin Interface
  • Hapijs Server Extensions and the Request life cycle
  • Hoek Benchmark timer

In the next video

• Create a repo on github
• Push local repo to github
• Test npm installing from github

Continue to the next video V007

In this tutorial we will create a failing test for our Hapijs plugin’s elapsed time feature. Then I will briefly discuss the Hapijs reference sections for plugins and logging so that we can implement this feature.

Our elapsed time feature will be implemented by hooking into the request life cycle using a server extension for onRequest and onResponse. We will create a benchmark timer in the onRequest and then log the elapsed time in the onResponse.

Goals

• Create elapsed time feature test
• Review plugin docs for ext, log
• Implement elapsed time feature

Video Info

• Episode: CW V004
• Skill level: Beginner with basic Node.js skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Mocha test runner knowledge
  • Basic Chai assertion library knowledge
• Published: May 8th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 11:10
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

• We will use a test driven development approach to building our plugin
  • Test runner is Mocha
  • Assertion library is Chaijs
  • Hapijs website
  • Hapijs Plugin Interface
  • Hapijs Server Extensions and the Request life cycle

In the next video

• Iterate on: id, method, url, status, and headers features
  • adding failing tests
  • implement features

Continue to the next video V005

I will also show you where to find the Hapijs information which documents the Hapi plugin interface so you will know where to find details when you need them.

Then we will create our failing test for the plugin to register, and then finally we will implement the basic Hapi plugin shell to allow our plugin to register successfully.

Goals

• Add first pending test
• Add setup
• Create plugin shell

Video Info

• Episode: CW V003
• Skill level: Beginner with basic Node.js skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Mocha test runner knowledge
  • Basic Chai assertion library knowledge
• Published: May 7th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 7:54
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

• We will use a test driven development approach to building our plugin
• Test runner is Mocha
• Assertion library is Chaijs
• Hapijs website
• Hapijs Plugin Interface

In the next video

• Create elapsed time feature test
• Review plugin docs for ext, log
• Implement elapsed time feature

Continue to the next video V004

Goals

• Review project goals
• Cleanup example
• Install mocha and chai, commit
• Install hapi

Video Info

• Episode: CW V002
• Skill level: Beginner with basic Node.js skills
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js & npm
  • Basic Git
• Published: May 6th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,git,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 4:49
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

• We will use a test driven development approach to building our plugin
• Test runner will be mocha
• Assertion library will be chaijs

In the next video

• Create our first plugin test
• Implement plugin registration

Continue to the next video V003

Goals

• Clone a git repo to get boilerplate
• Edit some key files
• Commit our changes

Video Info

• Episode: CW V001
• Skill level: Beginner
• Prerequisites:
  • Basic Node.js knowledge
  • Basic Git
• Published: May 5th, 2014
• Tags: js, nodejs,git,boilerplate,hapi,plugin,free
• Duration: 10:48
• Node.js version: 0.10.25
• Git version: 1.8.2.1

Notes

Why clone vs starting with empty folder?

Note while you can start out building a module from an empty folder, I have found that it much easier to just create yourself a boilerplate project which you can clone from. This lets you keep a up to date set of supporting files that you can quickly bring in and then you are bootstrapped and ready to develop.

In these instructions we will use my boilerplate repo bare-js, but you could easily substitute your own or fork mine.

Creating README first

• Establish written goals
• Create example API
• Refine the API
• Share with others

Links

• https://github.com/jeffbski/bare-js - boilerplate node.js module cloned in this video

In the next video

• Install mocha and chai, commit
• Install hapi
• Review project goals
• Refine our example

Continue to the next video V002