README

Callipyge is a simple tool to help you build and maintain beautiful backends.

Requirements

Tools

This readme uses yarn (instead of npm). To install it:

npm install --global yarn

Node 6

We use node 6.x for this project. If you don't have it installed, I recommend https://github.com/mklement0/n-install to grab n, the Node.js version manager.

Services

This web engine is designed to work with two online services:

• now.sh as an https web host for node (and docker)
• Cloudant to host the CouchDB database

Both offer free (but limited) accounts.

now.sh

now.sh offers the simplest node https hosting possible. Paid accounts are about 15$/month and let you use your own domain names and hide your source files (otherwise they are public).

Make sure you have the now-cli installed:

npm install --global now

Cloudant

Cloudant offers a complete CouchDB service (including geo and fulltext search). Usage is measured and billed monthly if it's 50$ or over.

Step by step

cd [somewhere]
mkdir my-project # or whatever name you choose
cd my-project # or whatever name you choose
yarn init -y
yarn add callipyge-core
node_modules/.bin/callipyge init
yarn start

You'll want to rerun init if you upgrade callipyge-core:

yarn callipyge init

Customizing

Templates

You'll find templates/ and templates/partials/ is populated with symlinks to relevant files. Feel free to replace them as needed.

CSS / Sass

We use Foundation and Sass to style the site. You'll find symlinks to the original files in scss/ which you can edit at will.

Use yarn sass to regenerate the css file found in the public/css/ directory.

Security

Notice a new .env file in your project root. Make sure there's also a .env line in your .gitignore file to prevent it from being shared. This .env file contains your cloudant username and password.