angular-rest-browser — column browser for REST APIs

Getting Started

To get you started you can simply clone the angular-rest-browser repository and install the dependencies:

Install Dependencies

We have two kinds of dependencies in this project: tools and angular framework code. The tools help us manage and test the application.

• We get the tools we depend upon via npm, the [node package manager][npm].
• We get the angular code via bower, a [client-side code package manager][bower].

We have preconfigured npm to automatically run bower so we can simply do:

npm install

Behind the scenes this will also call bower install. You should find that you have two new folders in your project.

• node_modules - contains the npm packages for the tools we need
• bower_components - contains the angular framework files

Run the Application

We have preconfigured the project with a simple development web server. The simplest way to start this server is:

npm start

Now browse to the app at http://localhost:8000/app/index.html.

Serving the Application Files

While angular is client-side-only technology and it's possible to create angular webapps that don't require a backend server at all, we recommend serving the project files using a local webserver during development to avoid issues with security restrictions (sandbox) in browsers. The sandbox implementation varies between browsers, but quite often prevents things like cookies, xhr, etc to function properly when an html page is opened via file:// scheme instead of http://.

Running the App during Development

The angular-rest-browser project comes preconfigured with a local development webserver. It is a node.js tool called [http-server][http-server]. You can start this webserver with npm start but you may choose to install the tool globally:

sudo npm install -g http-server

Then you can start your own development web server to server static files, from a folder, by running:

http-server

Alternatively, you can choose to configure your own webserver, such as apache or nginx. Just configure your server to serve the files under the app/ directory.

Running the App in Production

This really depends on how complex is your app and the overall infrastructure of your system, but the general rule is that all you need in production are all the files under the app/ directory. Everything else should be omitted.

Angular apps are really just a bunch of static html, css and js files that just need to be hosted somewhere, where they can be accessed by browsers.

If your Angular app is talking to the backend server via xhr or other means, you need to figure out what is the best way to host the static files to comply with the same origin policy if applicable. Usually this is done by hosting the files by the backend server or through reverse-proxying the backend server(s) and webserver(s).

Continuous Integration

Travis CI

[Travis CI][travis] is a continuous integration service, which can monitor GitHub for new commits to your repository and execute scripts such as building the app or running tests. The angular-rest-browser project contains a Travis configuration file, .travis.yml, which will cause Travis to run your tests when you push to GitHub.

You will need to enable the integration between Travis and GitHub. See the Travis website for more instruction on how to do this.