This is the code that accompanied a presentation on the MEAN stack to the SFHTML users group on Oct 30 2014.

MEAN (MongoDb + Express + Angular + Node) is an end-to-end technology stack for HTML/JavaScript applications.

You must have node/npm installed. The application can run with its in-memory database ... but then you'd only be looking at the EAN stack :-)

Install MongoDb first in order to run with the MongoDb database.

This app requires both a backend server (for data) and a frontend server (for the client-side application and its assets).

Start them separately.

• start your MongoDb server
• open a terminal or command window
• go to the backend directory
• run npm install
• choose to run either with the in-memory db or with mongo

  • in-mem:

      npm start
      node bin/www
      node-debug bin/www        (under node-inspector)
    

  • mongo:

      env MONGO=1 npm start
      node bin/www mongo
      node-debug bin/www mongo  (under node-inspector)
    

The terminal window tells you that the server is running and in which mode (in-mem or mongo).

You can try the GET apis in a browser. Here are some sample URLs:

http://localhost:4567/api/questions
http://localhost:4567/api/questions?limit=3
http://localhost:4567/api/questions/summaries
http://localhost:4567/api/questions/summaries?sort=votes&limit=5
http://localhost:4567/api/questions/5448b56b57675cbc246e6dbd

You'll have to use a tool like curl to try the POST methods.

We think the Postman chrome plugin is a great API exploration tool. We've made it easy for you by preparing some requests in a Postman json file.

Import those requests as follows:

• Open Postman
• Click the Collections button
• Click the inbox icon
• Drag backend/Postman_MEAN_Demo.json onto the dialog box

You should see a new collection called "MEAN Demo". Have fun.

This section of the code is a separate static site that consumes the data API created in backend.

You can run it by serving up the assets in frontend/app in a simple HTTP server, such as http-server.

npm install http-server -g # one-time only
cd frontend/app
http-server -p 3000 # default port is 8080

Now you can access the demo at http://localhost:3000

The following is a quick orientation to the salient structural features of this application

/backend                  - the node-express-mongo data server
   /bin/www               - the launch point for the server
   /dataservice           - the in-memory and MongoDb data services
   /public                - static client assets ... there are none as this is a data server
   /routes                - the router for the data api
   API Requirements.md    - the "original" requirements for the data api
   app.js                 - the express server
   Postman_MEAN_Demo.json - Postman request collection, helpful in api exploration
   Tutorial.md            - How to build the backend from scratch

/frontend                 - the client application written with angular