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https://github.com/spikebrehm/isomorphic-tutorial

Tutorial app to demonstrate isomorphic JavaScript concepts.
https://github.com/spikebrehm/isomorphic-tutorial

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Tutorial app to demonstrate isomorphic JavaScript concepts.

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README 

        
Isomorphic JavaScript Tutorial

===================



This is a small sample app built to demonstrate isomorphic JavaScript concepts.



## Overview



Here we've built the minimum-viable example of an isomorphic JavaScript app: an

app that can run on both client and server. Check out my

[blog post](http://nerds.airbnb.com/isomorphic-javascript-future-web-apps/)

on isomorphic JavaScript for some background.



This is a simple Express "blog" app that lists blog posts. Each page is fully

rendered on the server, however upon subsequent navigation, we use the HTML5

History API, aka `pushState`, to fetch the data for that page from the API and

render the HTML client-side using React.



## Under the hood



We combine a few modules together to build an isomorphic JavaScript app. Each

of these modules was built to support both the client and the server, and by

creating some small shims around them, we can abstract out the differences to

create the same API for both client and server.



We use the following modules on both client and server:



* [React](https://github.com/facebook/react) (UI components)

* [Director](https://github.com/flatiron/director) (routing)

* [Superagent](https://github.com/visionmedia/superagent) (HTTP requests)



On top of a basic [Express](https://github.com/visionmedia/express) app.



We use [Browserify](http://browserify.org/) and [Grunt](http://gruntjs.com/) to

package our server-side CommonJS modules in a way that allows us to use them in

the client-side.



## Getting it running



### Install Node.js >= 0.10.x



If Node.js version >= 0.10.x is not already installed on your system, install it so you can run this app.



#### Check if it's installed



The command `which node` will return a path to your installed version of Node.js, if it exists on your system.



    $ which node

    /usr/local/bin/node



If it is installed, make sure it's >= 0.10.x.



    $ node --version

    v0.10.33



#### To install



##### Mac



Preferably install using Homebrew:



    $ brew install node



##### Else



Otherwise, go to the [nodejs.org](http://nodejs.org/) and download the binary to install on your system.



### Install `grunt-cli`



This app uses [Grunt](http://gruntjs.com/) to build its assets. To run Grunt, we need to install the `grunt-cli` package globally on your system using NPM.



    $ npm install -g grunt-cli



### Clone this repo onto your machine



    $ cd ~/code

    $ git clone [email protected]:spikebrehm/isomorphic-tutorial.git

    $ cd isomorphic-tutorial



### Run `npm install` to install dependenices



	$ npm install

	npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/superagent

	npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/handlebars

	npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/director

    ...



### Run the app!



We'll start up our local Node.js web server using Grunt, so it can automatically do useful things for us when we change files like recompile our assets and restart the server.



    $ grunt server



This will start our local web server on port `3030`.



You can view it in your web browser at `http://localhost:3030/`



## Adding features



Now that you've got it running, you can start adding some features to get to know the problem space better.



We've got some branches you can check out that show how to add certain features.



### Adding the Moment library for date formatting



[compare to master](https://github.com/spikebrehm/isomorphic-tutorial/compare/moment)



This branch adds the [Moment](http://momentjs.com/) date formatting library for use on the `/posts/:id` page.



### Use Marked library to add Markdown to posts



[compare to master](https://github.com/spikebrehm/isomorphic-tutorial/compare/markdown)



This branch adds the [Marked](https://github.com/chjj/marked) library to allow

formatting of blog post bodies in Markdown, in just a few lines of code.



### Create a route for adding posts



[compare to master](https://github.com/spikebrehm/isomorphic-tutorial/compare/posts-new)



Create a page with a form at `/posts/new`, which POSTs to the `/api/posts.json` endpoint.



## License



MIT