Amateur Radio Club at Ohio State

A website for the Amateur Radio Club at The Ohio State University.

Requirements

• Node.js
• bower: npm install -g bower
• grunt: npm install -g grunt-cli

Quickstart

To start the server for the first time or after any updates, just run the following commands:

git submodule update --init
npm install
node server

You will then be able to access the project at http://localhost:3000/

To start the server subsequent times just run:

node server

Upgrading

Foundation

If you'd like to upgrade to a newer version of Foundation down the road just run:

bower update

Node Libraries

If you'd like to update the libraries for the project run:

npm update --save

Update Submodules

Git submodules are located in the /vendor directory. To update them all run

git submodule update --remote --merge

To update only one of them

cd vendor/$(submodule)
git pull
cd ../..
git commit -am "Updated submodule: $(submodule)"

Development

Creating new views

New views are created by creating a new route. This is done in the routes directory. All files in the routes directory are loaded by /routes/index.js. The routes for the public site are located in /routes/root.js. All sub-sections of the site should be located in a separate route file similar to root.js.

An example route file is located below, however, much more complex routes can be created using express.

// routes/foo.js
module.exports = function(app) {
  app.get('/foo', function (req, res) {
    res.render('foo', { title: 'Foo' });
    res.end();
  });
}

Then, you must create a new view file. All view files are created using the jade template language. This markup language is compiled to html before being sent to the user.

New files should be created in /views and should extend the file layout.jade unless they must use a different style from the rest of the website. These new views should start like

extend layout
block content

From there, the content should be included.

Partials in jade

jade supports partials through two different methods. One is escaped partials

#{variable}

The other is an unescaped partial

!{variable}

Modifying stylesheets

When working with style sheets, it may be convenient to run the default grunt task. This task takes advantage of grunt-contrib-watch to recompile CSS whenever the SASS sources are changed. All changes to the style sheets should be made in the files located in /scss.

To run the default grunt task, which uglifies vendor javascript and creates the CSS files, run

grunt

If you would rather just build only the CSS for updating the repository with, then you should run

grunt build-css

This should only be done when you are done modifiying the stylesheets for the current options.

Updating Foundation and Other Javascript Providers

Whenever the javascript from vendors is updated via

bower update

It is require that you either run

grunt

Or

grunt build-js

To update the site's uglified copies of the javascript libraries.

Developing nodejs files without restarting the server

To develop nodejs files without restarting the server, it is reccomended that you use nodemon. You can install nodemon by running

npm install -g nodemon

nodemon is used in a similar fashion to running a node server. To run the node server with nodemon run

nodemon server

Whenever you save a change to one of the javascript files in the directory, nodemon will automatically restart the server for you. This way, you do not have to manually restart the server.

While this is not a required development tool, it is recommended when actively developing new routes especially when making small changes. Documentation on how to use nodemon more effectively can be found at https://github.com/remy/nodemon#nodemon.