Yet Another Hackathon Starter

A boilerplate for Node.js web applications.

I know there are many hackathon starter out there, I also have used some of them and found out that not all of the predefined stuff in that starter is what I need. Within this project I try to put a starter as minimum but also can speed up the process of make the hackathon prototype

Getting Started

This boilerplace consists of backend and front-end.

The easiest way to get started is to clone the repository:

# Get the latest snapshot
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/martindavid/hackathon-starter.git myproject

# Change directory
cd myproject

# Install NPM dependencies for backend
npm install

# Go to client and install NPM dependencies for frontend
cd client && npm install

# Go back to root folder then simply start your app
npm run start-dev

Open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000

Deploy to Heroku

The app is ready to be deployed to Heroku.

In production, Heroku will use Procfile which boots just the server:

web: npm run server

Inside server.js, we tell Node/Express we'd like it to serve static assets in production:

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
  app.use(express.static('client/build'));
}

You just need to have Webpack produce a static bundle of the React app (below).

Steps

We assume basic knowledge of Heroku.

0. Setup your Heroku account and Heroku CLI

For installing the CLI tool, see this article.

1. Build the React app

Running npm run build creates the static bundle which we can then use any HTTP server to serve:

cd client/
npm run build

2. Commit the client/build folder to source control

From the root of the project:

git add client/build
git commit -m 'Adding `build` to source control'

3. Create the Heroku app

heroku apps:create hackathon-starter

4. Push to Heroku

git push heroku master

Heroku will give you a link at which to view your live app.