Sagan client module

This module holds all web resources that make the client application of spring.io:

• JavaScript modules
• CSS styles
• images and fonts
• front-end dependencies

This module is using several tools for its own build system:

• node.js and npm
• Webpack

Build requirements

Node.js is brought by the Gradle build itself, so you don't need it to build the project. But if you want to work on the sagan-client module, installing a recent version of node.js is a good idea. Usage of the Node Version Manager (nvm) is perfectly fine.

Making changes in sagan-client

When running the application with the SiteApplication class in your IDE, resources in sagan-client are served directly from resources built in the sagan-client module, so you can keep the Java application running and re-build the client by running npm run build on the command line.

For this to work, your IDE should be configured to consider the sagan-site module as its working directory. Check out the run the site locally section on the wiki.

Details about the JavaScript build

If you want to know more about the JavaScript build, this chapter will help you; reading this is not required.

The JavaScript application can be built manually with (the build result is located in the build/dist folder):

$ npm run build

This will trigger the webpack build, which bundles and optimizes the JavaScript, CSS and images. Check the webpack.config.js file for more details.

Node.js and npm

npm is the node package manager; it installs required dependencies in the node_modules directory. Check the package.json file to find:

• all dependencies and their versions in devDependencies
• all available scripts that you can run with npm run scriptname

Note: we make extensive use of npm scripts so you don't have to install binaries globally on your system's PATH. npm dynamically adds binaries listed in node_modules/.bin to its own PATH.