this project is no longer maintained!

Universal-CLI

Universal-CLI is fork from Angular-CLI. It supports Angular Universal (with --universal flag after ung new or ung init), see Support for server side rendering for detail. It is a separate package because the Core-CLI team is not able to maintain non-core functionality.

I am looking for maintainers, please let me know if you're interested in supporting universal-cli.

Slack

Feel free to ask questions related to Angular Universal and Universal-CLI at angular-universal.slack.com

Prototype of a CLI for Angular 2 applications based on the ember-cli project.

Note

This project is very much still a work in progress.

The CLI is now in alpha. If you wish to collaborate while the project is still young, check out our issue list.

Before submitting new issues, have a look at issues marked with the type: faq label.

Webpack update

We changed the build system between beta.10 and beta.14, from SystemJS to Webpack. And with it comes a lot of benefits. To take advantage of these, your app built with the old beta will need to migrate.

You can update your beta.10 projects to beta.14 by following these instructions.

Prerequisites

Both the CLI and generated project have dependencies that require Node 4 or higher, together with NPM 3 or higher.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Generating a New Project
• Generating Components, Directives, Pipes and Services
• Generating a Route
• Creating a Build
• Build Targets and Environment Files
• Base tag handling in index.html
• Bundling
• Running Unit Tests
• Running End-to-End Tests
• Proxy To Backend
• Deploying the App via GitHub Pages
• Linting and formatting code
• Support for offline applications
• Support for server side rendering
• Commands autocompletion
• Project assets
• Global styles
• CSS preprocessor integration
• 3rd Party Library Installation
• Global Library Installation
• Updating universal-cli
• Development Hints for hacking on universal-cli

Installation

BEFORE YOU INSTALL: please read the prerequisites

npm install -g universal-cli

Usage

ung --help

Generating and serving an Angular2 project via a development server

ung new PROJECT_NAME
cd PROJECT_NAME
ung serve

Navigate to http://localhost:4200/. The app will automatically reload if you change any of the source files.

You can configure the default HTTP port and the one used by the LiveReload server with two command-line options :

ung serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4201 --live-reload-port 49153

Generating Components, Directives, Pipes and Services

You can use the ung generate (or just ung g) command to generate Angular components:

ung generate component my-new-component
ung g component my-new-component # using the alias

# components support relative path generation
# if in the directory src/app/feature/ and you run
ung g component new-cmp
# your component will be generated in src/app/feature/new-cmp
# but if you were to run
ung g component ../newer-cmp
# your component will be generated in src/app/newer-cmp

You can find all possible blueprints in the table below:

Scaffold	Usage
Component	ung g component my-new-component
Directive	ung g directive my-new-directive
Pipe	ung g pipe my-new-pipe
Service	ung g service my-new-service
Class	ung g class my-new-class
Interface	ung g interface my-new-interface
Enum	ung g enum my-new-enum
Module	ung g module my-module

Generating a route

Generating routes in the CLI has been disabled for the time being. A new router and new route generation blueprints are coming.

You can read the official documentation for the new Router here: https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/guide/router.html. Please note that even though route generation is disabled, building your projects with routing is still fully supported.

Creating a build

ung build

The build artifacts will be stored in the dist/ directory.

Build Targets and Environment Files

ung build can specify both a build target (--target=production or --target=development) and an environment file to be used with that build (--environment=dev or --environment=prod). By default, the development build target and environment are used.

The mapping used to determine which environment file is used can be found in angular-cli.json:

"environments": {
  "source": "environments/environment.ts",
  "dev": "environments/environment.ts",
  "prod": "environments/environment.prod.ts"
}

These options also apply to the serve command. If you do not pass a value for environment, it will default to dev for development and prod for production.

# these are equivalent
ung build --target=production --environment=prod
ung build --prod --env=prod
ung build --prod
# and so are these
ung build --target=development --environment=dev
ung build --dev --e=dev
ung build --dev
ung build

You can also add your own env files other than dev and prod by doing the following:

• create a src/environments/environment.NAME.ts
• add { "NAME": 'src/environments/environment.NAME.ts' } to the apps[0].environments object in angular-cli.json
• use them via the --env=NAME flag on the build/serve commands.

Base tag handling in index.html

When building you can modify base tag (<base href="/">) in your index.html with --base-href your-url option.

# Sets base tag href to /myUrl/ in your index.html
ung build --base-href /myUrl/
ung build --bh /myUrl/

Bundling

All builds make use of bundling, and using the --prod flag in ung build --prod or ung serve --prod will also make use of uglifying and tree-shaking functionality.

Running unit tests

ung test

Tests will execute after a build is executed via Karma, and it will automatically watch your files for changes. You can run tests a single time via --watch=false or --single-run.

You can run tests with coverage via --code-coverage. The coverage report will be in the coverage/ directory.

Linting during tests is also available via the --lint flag. See Linting and formatting code chapter for more informations.

Running end-to-end tests

ung e2e

Before running the tests make sure you are serving the app via ung serve.

End-to-end tests are run via Protractor.

Proxy To Backend

Using the proxying support in webpack's dev server we can highjack certain urls and send them to a backend server. We do this by passing a file to --proxy-config

Say we have a server running on http://localhost:3000/api and we want all calls to http://localhost:4200/api to go to that server.

We create a file next to projects package.json called proxy.conf.json with the content

{
  "/api": {
    "target": "http://localhost:3000",
    "secure": false
  }
}

You can read more about what options are available here webpack-dev-server proxy settings

and then we edit the package.json file's start script to be

"start": "ng serve --proxy-config proxy.conf.json",

now run it with npm start

Deploying the app via GitHub Pages

You can deploy your apps quickly via:

ung github-pages:deploy --message "Optional commit message"

This will do the following:

• creates GitHub repo for the current project if one doesn't exist
• rebuilds the app in production mode at the current HEAD
• creates a local gh-pages branch if one doesn't exist
• moves your app to the gh-pages branch and creates a commit
• edit the base tag in index.html to support github pages
• pushes the gh-pages branch to github
• returns back to the original HEAD

Creating the repo requires a token from github, and the remaining functionality relies on ssh authentication for all git operations that communicate with github.com. To simplify the authentication, be sure to setup your ssh keys.

If you are deploying a user or organization page, you can instead use the following command:

ung github-pages:deploy --user-page --message "Optional commit message"

This command pushes the app to the master branch on the github repo instead of pushing to gh-pages, since user and organization pages require this.

Linting and formatting code

You can lint your app code by running ung lint. This will use the lint npm script that in generated projects uses tslint.

You can modify the these scripts in package.json to run whatever tool you prefer.

Support for offline applications

The --mobile flag has been disabled temporarily. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Angular-CLI includes support for offline applications via the --mobile flag on ung new. Support is experimental, please see the angular/mobile-toolkit project and https://mobile.angular.io/ for documentation on how to make use of this functionality.

Support for server side rendering

Universal-CLI includes Angular Universal via the --universal flag on ung new and ung init.

Angular Universal helps you to seo optimize your application and offers a better user experience through server side rendering. Please see the angular/universal project and https://universal.angular.io/ for documentation on how to make use of this functionality.

Update an existing Project

cd path/to/project and init your project with the universal option ung init --universal. Take every Pipe, Directive, Component, Module and Routes from ./src/app/app.module.ts and move them to ./src/app/app.browser.module.ts and ./src/app/app.node.module.ts. Try ung serve, if your application looks like before, then you can delete the files ./src/app/app.module.ts and ./src/main.ts. Have fun with Angular Universal!

Commands autocompletion

To turn on auto completion use the following commands:

For bash:

ung completion 1>> ~/.bashrc 2>>&1
source ~/.bashrc

For zsh:

ung completion 1>> ~/.zshrc 2>>&1
source ~/.zshrc

Windows users using gitbash:

ung completion 1>> ~/.bash_profile 2>>&1
source ~/.bash_profile

Project assets

You use the assets array in angular-cli.json to list files or folders you want to copy as-is when building your project:

"assets": [
  "assets",
  "favicon.ico"
]

Global styles

The styles.css file allows users to add global styles and supports CSS imports.

If the project is created with the --style=sass option, this will be a .sass file instead, and the same applies to scss/less/styl.

You can add more global styles via the apps[0].styles property in angular-cli.json.

CSS Preprocessor integration

Universal-CLI supports all major CSS preprocessors:

• sass/scss (http://sass-lang.com/)
• less (http://lesscss.org/)
• stylus (http://stylus-lang.com/)

To use these preprocessors simply add the file to your component's styleUrls:

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: 'app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['app.component.scss']
})
export class AppComponent {
  title = 'app works!';
}

When generating a new project you can also define which extension you want for style files:

ung new sassy-project --style=sass

Or set the default style on an existing project:

ung set defaults.styleExt scss

3rd Party Library Installation

Simply install your library via npm install lib-name --save and import it in your code.

If the library does not include typings, you can install them using npm:

npm install d3 --save
npm install @types/d3 --save-dev

If the library doesn't have typings available at @types/, you can still use it by manually adding typings for it:

1. First, create a typings.d.ts file in your src/ folder. This file will be automatically included as global type definition.

2. Then, in src/typings.d.ts, add the following code:

declare module 'typeless-package';

3. Finally, in the component or file that uses the library, add the following code:

import * as typelessPackage from 'typeless-package';
typelessPackage.method();

Done. Note: you might need or find useful to define more typings for the library that you're trying to use.

Global Library Installation

Some javascript libraries need to be added to the global scope, and loaded as if they were in a script tag. We can do this using the apps[0].scripts and apps[0].styles properties of angular-cli.json.

As an example, to use Bootstrap 4 this is what you need to do:

First install Bootstrap from npm:

npm install bootstrap@next

Then add the needed script files to apps[0].scripts:

"scripts": [
  "../node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.js",
  "../node_modules/tether/dist/js/tether.js",
  "../node_modules/bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.js"
],

Finally add the Bootstrap CSS to the apps[0].styles array:

"styles": [
  "../node_modules/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css",
  "styles.css"
],

Restart ung serve if you're running it, and Bootstrap 4 should be working on your app.

Updating universal-cli

To update universal-cli to a new version, you must update both the global package and your project's local package.

Global package:

npm uninstall -g universal-cli
npm cache clean
npm install -g universal-cli

Local project package:

rm -rf node_modules dist tmp
npm install --save-dev universal-cli
npm install
ung init

Running ung init will check for changes in all the auto-generated files created by ung new and allow you to update yours. You are offered four choices for each changed file: y (overwrite), n (don't overwrite), d (show diff between your file and the updated file) and h (help).

Carefully read the diffs for each code file, and either accept the changes or incorporate them manually after ung init finishes.

The main cause of errors after an update is failing to incorporate these updates into your code.

You can find more details about changes between versions in CHANGELOG.md.

Development Hints for hacking on universal-cli

Working with master

git clone https://github.com/devCrossNet/universal-cli.git
cd universal-cli
npm link

npm link is very similar to npm install -g except that instead of downloading the package from the repo, the just cloned universal-cli/ folder becomes the global package. Any changes to the files in the universal-cli/ folder will immediately affect the global universal-cli package, allowing you to quickly test any changes you make to the cli project.

Now you can use universal-cli via the command line:

ung new foo
cd foo
npm link universal-cli
ung serve

npm link universal-cli is needed because by default the globally installed universal-cli just loads the local universal-cli from the project which was fetched remotely from npm. npm link universal-cli symlinks the global universal-cli package to the local universal-cli package. Now the universal-cli you cloned before is in three places: The folder you cloned it into, npm's folder where it stores global packages and the universal-cli project you just created.

You can also use ung new foo --link-cli to automatically link the universal-cli package.

Please read the official npm-link documentation and the npm-link cheatsheet for more information.

License

MIT