Best way to implement Angular Universal - node.js

I suffer a lot in the past with angular apps and social media, so I'm glad to see that Angular Universal is being developed.
Currently I have some apps that are Angular4 as front end, and Java with Spring as backend. As far as I know there are some ways to implement Angular Universal here but they seem pretty complex (at least is what I read). So I want to know if that is in that way or not...
But anyway, my main question here, is because I saw that in order to implement Angular Universal we should have (ideally) to make the backend with nodejs, how to structure these two technologies, I mean... Should I have Angular app as a frontend app and Nodejs app as a totally different backend app (just like Java) where both are connected with web services? Or should I served Angular4 SPA direcly from Nodejs views?
And where should I place Angular Universal here?

Now that Angular CLI v1.6 is out, there's native support for building Angular Universal into your projects easily using Node.js! Essentially, you would ng build --prod to create a dist/ folder, and then create a simple node back-end and connect to your dist/ folder containing your front-end code. This article gives a great step-by-step guide: Angular server-side rendering in Node with Express Universal Engine.

When you use Angular Universal, it is going to be a single process (Operating system process) that hosts and serves your Angular pages.
In production you may have multiple such processes behind a load-balancer.
Your back-end APIs (if developed in Javascript) may be hosted in the same Node server or in separate server.
The Angular Universal setup steps are detailed here in the official documentation.
However, I had a few wasted hours to find out the following point
Webpack 3 is not compatible with ts-loader versions higher than 3.5.0. At the time of developing this, the latest version of Angular CLI is 1.7.2 which uses Webpack 3.*. Hence, while setting up Angular Universal, install ts-config#3.5.0
Finally, here I have a seed project for Angular Universal. It uses Vagrant to locally setup the development environment. Also, by tweaking an environment variable in your local host machine, you can run it in a production mode in a Docker container. The steps to run it are detailed in the readme file.
If you refer to my Dockerfile in the above Github link, its entrypoint reads:
ENTRYPOINT ["pm2-runtime","start","/home/aus/dist/server.js"]
So, you see, it's just a singe command, and your app is up and running at port 4000. Of course you can use other command line parameters to provide memory limit, port and so on.

Related

How to 'build' a node js application?

I have a node.js application that run as a application server.
It is deployed on an Ubuntu 20.04 machine running on AWS, uses nginx as a reverse proxy and PM2 as a service starter.
Everything seems perfectly configured.
What looks strange to me, is that I have a React application, in a similar environment, but, before to move it on the server, I run build it, so creating a sort of packed and not easily human readable application.
My question is: Is there the need to do the same with a node.js application?
And, in case of positive answer, How to 'build' a node.js application?
There is no need to build a normal nodejs application.
What you mean is the use of a bundler e.g. webpack and a javascript compiler e.g. babel. To create a react application, you usually use a tool like create-react-app that sets up all this stuff for you. For react you need the compilation beacause you use the jsx syntax that browsers do not understand. In addition to that a bundler has some more advantages.
Check out this video if you want to know more about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IG4UmULyoA
No you don't have to build anything for node.js you just have to run the server. for client side apps you need to build and serve the Dist through web servers like apache or nginx.

Does the default Reactjs application use node.js?

This may be a dumb question, but is the default react app (created using npm create-react-app my-app) using node.js? I am confused because in my web development class at university, I had to download node.js to create react applications. However, I didn't have to do anything like creating a server or initiating a node.js file, which is described in w3school's node.js tutorial. Because of this, I found out that I don't even really know what node is used for, besides downloading packages like redux and whatnot.
create-react-app uses node.js for all of its dev tooling. Likewise, a lot of the tools you'll use in the React ecosystem (like webpack, prettier, npm), all run on top of node.js as well).
You'll most probably build your react app to a static file, in which case the production output will not require node.js, it will be html and javascript assets that can be served directly to a client.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have other specific questions
Node.js is used for server-side while React.js is for the front-end part. So, no, you don't need Node.js.
Under development mode, yes. Create react app runs NodeJs with Webpack Dev Server to allow you get feedback when modifing files, start or stop the server.

Should I build server-side of application inside nuxt.js server directory?

I want to build full-stack application with Nuxt.js. I am wondering where I should create my server-side inside Nuxt.js or maybe I should create separated project only for server stuff.
I am trying to set up my project but I do not know how I should do it. The application which I am building will have own front-end, back-end and also database (I will use MongoDB) but actually I do not know how I should start. I was reading a lot about SSR and Nuxt.js seems really good if am planing to use Vue.js on fronted. While creating nuxt app I can choose to use Express and then I can see server directory inside my directory structure does it mean that i should build all back-end inside this directory or maybe it is only for small stuff?
I have also another question what if I want to use Nest.js on back-end can i just use npm i -g #nestjs/cli and then nest new project-name inside my server directory ? I was looking also for this answer but almost all results in google for this type are about (comparison between Nuxt.js, Next.js and Nest.js).
It will be my first bigger full-stack project and I want to do it right but I am a really beginner in this so I am looking for answer from more experienced programmers.
You can run express or any node.js server you want inside Nuxt.js. When installing Nuxt.js with scaffolding tool create-nuxt-app, you can choose integrated server-side frameworks : Express, Koa, Hapi, Feathers, Micro, Fastify, Adonis (WIP). There isn't offical Nest.js integration, but you can easily find a starter kit on github.
With create-nuxt-app, if you choose to use any node.js server inside your nuxt app, you will see a server directory inside your directory structure, with the corresponding server-side pre-configured index.js file.
Here is my own feeling about it:
I think the inside solution make sense for a small SPA or Headless project (Ex: parse and serve files, a simple JWT Authentification, a small websocket server...), or for a front-end logic application that cannot fit in client browser and who are nothing to do with the database (like image or file computation).
But generally, this server run the database layer for your Nuxt application: a REST or GraphQL API. It can also run your business logic of your app, serve authentification, and more and more when project growth...
If you think about separation of concerns and microservices
architecture, do not use server inside Nuxt.js. Splitting both frontend and server will result more flexibility. You can host frontend and API in different servers.
So now, do nuxt.js really need a node.js server ?
Yes if you plan to use it in SSR mode, No if you plan to use it like a SPA or Static generated way. Docs here... .
In SSR mode, nuxt.js ask data to your API at the first rendering, and provide a complete SEO compatible page to the client browser or bots. It also provide all javascript that the browser need to navigate and fetch your API. For that, nuxt.js in SSR mode should run with node.js.
I assume you said "back-end" for your API and your business logic application, in this case, you should separate nuxt.js and your server. Two node.js instances to run both.

Why Angular need Node Js? and what is role of Angular Cli?

I am a Beginner to Angular technology and came across this question.
why is Node js needed in Angular as Node js is a backend technology?
You need NodeJs for angular if you intend to create a front end server, use typescript or make anything other than a purely in browser application(unless you use another server framework: Apache, nginx, lighttp, ruby/rails etc.). For example Vanilla javascript does not support require or import functionality so you need node to load file dependencies, and angularjs does not allow for server creation on its own. You can also choose to build angular applications in TypeScript which utilises NodeJs.
It is worth noting that technically speaking nodejs and angularjs are separate frameworks, angular can be run without node but would only support limited functionality(no db access, no server etc).
The CLI is needed in order to run angular commands through the command line, to generate services / components etc.
You can read more about angular here
Angular does not need Node. However to make the dependencies management easier especially in package.json , npm which is a package manager is required. And in order to get npm, you need to install Node first.
As for angular cli, it provides a terminal that makes it easy to execute operations like creation of an angular app, angular components, building...

Angular CLI Node Express.js

I come from the LAMP world. Greetings. 🖖
I'm trying to get started with the new Angular and Node.js. I already have Node and an Express server installed on my machine. Now I want to use Angular as I start building my app.
One thing I don't understand is why the Angular CLI is spinning up a server to "run the application" and why it seems we have to setup proxies and do other things to get it to work with Express.
When I think of Angular, I'm most familiar with AngularJS as part of my LAMP stack workflow. All I do here is serve it as a .js file and serve it from the same webserver that is serving everything else. Why is a client-side script getting its own server? How is it different from Express and how does it fit in with Angular Universal, which I would like to use to take advantage of SSR.
I'm not looking at how to get it all to work, I can copy and paste and read docs just fine, I'm trying to understand the fundamental concept here. The Angular docs don't explain why they are asking you to "serve the application". Is it just to test it? Why would I have two servers in development and one in production, shouldn't the dev site mirror the production site as best as possible?

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