Cognition Starter Kit

Professional Edition

Cause we're professionals.

This is simple boilerplate and build system that will generate a project structure on which you can build a frontend app powered by the cognition-framework.

Use It

Note: You'll need to have node >=4.0.0.

Install gulp globally first.

npm install -g gulp

This boilerplate project ships with a little cli app that currently responds to the command setup, so

./node_modules/cognition-kit/bin/kit.js setup
gulp

and you'll be off to the races. You can install cognition-kit globally and use it, too.

npm install -g cognition-kit
kit setup
gulp

This kit tool will populate your current working directory with the boilerplate directories and files for a new gulp powered Cognition project, and it will use child_process.exec to run npm install, pulling down the project's dependencies.

Coming Soon

• Pass a path like so: kit setup path/to/project_root, and populate the boilerplate there.
• A cog stub generator thing, so you can kit cog path/of/new/cog.html and save some keystrokes.
• You know, docs.

Optionally

This build file responds to several options.

    # defaults are given here

    PORT=3000             # switch up the port you'd like to bind to
    RELOAD=true           # turn livereload on or off by passing "true" or "false"
    PREFIX=false          # enable inline css prefixing via the html-autoprefixer postcss module
    IMPORT_CSS=false      # use post css to parse @import directives

    # Running the project on port 4002 with autoprefixing enabled looks like this:
    PORT=4002 PREFIX=true gulp

Now gulp is serving your project at localhost:4002 and handling some browser compatability crap for you. UH mazing.

Fun for the Whole Family

Go install Chrome, then get this livereload extension thing.

Ok, now try this livereload extension. All it does is inject a spot of javascript into your page (when it's turned on) that causes the client to listen to the server for notice. When the server says so, the client will reload the page.

By default, the webserver that runs this app has the livereload option enabled, so use it!

Going Forward

Drop a css, img, assets, whatever directory in dist and put things in them. Add app files (or cogs, i.e. .html files) in src/app.

Add more javascript and css dependencies in the vendor/js and vendor/css directories, and gulp will copy them over. If they don't copy right when you drop them in, restart the gulp process.

Everything ends up in dist, which is configured to be the webserver's webroot, so write your paths to web resources accordingly.

The build system copies your app files (cogs) into the dist/app directory as you hack on them. See this line in the root index.html file:

<script>$.cognition.init($("#cog-root"), "/app/app.html");</script>

After loading in Cognition, the cognition.init() method takes a jQuery selection and a path. The path, that second arg, references the app's entry point, the first ancestor cog, the genesis cog, the progenitor cog. It's an absolute path that points to PROJECT_ROOT/dist/app/index.html.

If It Doesn't Work

The docs for the cognition-framework don't exist? Quite yet? Bear with us, we're making them.

In the mean time, feel free to hit me up on the innerbeb: @enlore, my github's enlore, I'm on the NashDev slack as enlore, or just email me at n.e.lorenson@gmail.com.

You can ask about this boilerplate kit, about the framework itself, whatever you're feeling. I'll do my best to point you in the right direction.