Front-end Boilerplate

A scaffold for new front-end projects

Features

• Streaming build system
• Dynamic HTML templating
• Sass compilation, vendor prefixing, and minification
• JavaScript module bundling, optimization, and linting
• Image optimization
• Code formatting rules via EditorConfig and JS Beautifier
• Boilerplate README

Quick Start

Scaffold a new project by running these commands:

$ curl -L https://github.com/dynamit/front-end-boilerplate/archive/master.tar.gz | tar zx --strip 1
$ npm run setup

After the setup is compete, update the README with your project's info.

Local development

Start a local development environment:

$ npm start

This will compile files, then watch for changes to recompile.

This will also start a server at http://localhost:3000 that will live-reload when changes are detected.

Build for distribution

$ npm run build

In addition to the standard build tasks, this minifies CSS and uglifies JavaScript.

Configuration

Configuration values are defined in the config object in gulpfile.babel.js

Available options, with defaults shown:

templates: {
	src: ['src/templates/**/*', '!src/templates/+(layouts|components)/**'],
	dest: 'dist',
	watch: ['src/templates/**/*', 'src/data/**/*.json'],
	layouts: 'src/templates/layouts/*',
	partials: ['src/templates/components/**/*'],
	data: 'src/data/**/*.{json,yml}'
},
scripts: {
	src: './src/assets/scripts/main.js',
	dest: 'dist/assets/scripts',
	watch: 'src/assets/scripts/**/*'
},
styles: {
	src: 'src/assets/styles/main.scss',
	dest: 'dist/assets/styles',
	watch: 'src/assets/styles/**/*',
	browsers: ['last 1 version']
},
images: {
	src: 'src/assets/images/**/*',
	dest: 'dist/assets/images',
	watch: 'src/assets/images/**/*'
}

Definitions

{task}.src

Type: String or Array
Source files for task.

{task}.dest

Type: String
Output destination.

{task}.watch

Type: String or Array
Files that should trigger recompilation/reload when changed.

templates.layouts

Type: String or Array
Layout templates.

Layouts are wrappers for template content. Templates are inserted into layouts at the {% body %} tag.

templates.partials

Type: String or Array
Partial templates.

templates.data

Type: String or Array
Data that can be used when templating pages. Can be either JSON or YAML.

styles.browsers

Type: Array
Value passed to Autoprefixer

Template Assembly

Templates are assembled using fabricator-assemble.

There are number of options available, particularly the ability to define your own Handlebars helpers.

Custom Helpers

Helpers can be define as a object, where the key is the name of the helper and the value is a function.

assemble({
	helpers: {
	    markdown: require('helper-markdown'),
	    foo: function () {
	        return 'bar';
	    }
	}
});

PostCSS vs SASS

The gulpfile.js includes two styles tasks; one for SASS compilation and one for PostCSS compilation. You may choose to use either processor by simple commenting out/deleting the one you do not want.

SASS is the default in the gulpfile.js

Unit Testing

This version of the Front End Boilerplate is configured with Karma and Jasmime for unit testing. A sample test has been set up in tests/addition.spec.js. After you've create a JS module in src/assets/scripts and have imported it into main.js, you can create the module's matching .spec.js file under tests/.

Once you've written your unit test, you can start the test by running the command: karma start

After running your tests, coverage reporting will be available under build/reports/coverage/report-html/index.html (which you then open into a browser).

License

The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2016 Dynamit

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.