Completely separated client and server sides?

I suggest splitting apart server and client sides, making them completely separate and independent directory structures.

Optionally, when the user specifies both, a top level build script could provide shortcuts for automating mundane tasks performed on both sides, like npm install on both sides; ng serve on the client side and gulp run-watch on the server side, etc.

The user could then choose to run build/run scripts separately when convenient or run everything in one go when convenient, depending on specific needs or preferences.

[frgomes]

I’m using only npm now as per this article: https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/how-to-use-npm-as-a-build-tool/

I have now a completely self contained frontend and a completely self contained backend. My main project has only a .gitmodules file and that’s all.

In particular, I’ve removed gulp from the build process. The reason for that is that now I’m using a tool called s2i from RedHat OpenShift, which builds the application and generates a Docker image which conforms with best practices. I’ve found difficulties running s2i because, in a nutshell, gulp was not installed in the default bootstrap environment, which contains only node and npm. For this reason, I’ve completely eliminated the need of gulp in my build process.

For our information, this is how the build process of the backend looks like:

  "devDependencies": {
    "watch": "1.0.1",
    "nodemon": "1.11.0",
    "parallelshell": "2.0.0",
    "typescript": "^2.1.5",
    "ntypescript": "1.201609302242.1",
    "typings": "^2.1.0",
    "tslint": "^4.4.2",
    "mocha": "^2.4.5",
    "should": "^11.2.0"
  },

  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "npm run build",
    
    "start":       "node dist/server.js",
    
    "clean":   "rimraf dist",
    "zap":     "rimraf dist node_modules typings",

    "build":   "typings install && npm run compile && npm run test",
    "compile": "ntsc --outDir ./dist",

    "test":    "mocha",

    "watch": "watch 'npm run build' src",
    "reload": "nodemon --watch dist",
    "watch:reload": "parallelshell 'npm run watch' 'npm run reload'",

    "tools:typings": "npm install -g typings@2.1.0 && typings install"
  },

Doing this way, the backend can be reloaded when sources change, employing npm only.

I hope I’ve contributed with something useful. Thanks a lot for your great work on ng-fullstack! 😃

[ericmdantas]

Thank you for all the information, @frgomes, it’s definitely useful - and it’s also a good example for someone who wants to do something like in your case.

👍