Riess.js

Riess is a full stack JavaScript application framework.

It's backend origins are from the meanjs JavaScript project team, and thus Riess serves as the next evolutionary phase of the MEAN.JS framework.

Status Notice

This repository and project status is very raw.

Work on repository is fairly new and started only in December 2016 so many of the pushed functionality in the project could be half-baked, hanging for more commits to "finish" or better approach the code (expect many re-factoring).

On the plus side, it means there's a room for contribution and ideas to be implemented.

MEAN.JS 1 to Riess.js

The following table summarizes enhancements and changes made in Riess.js to update the original MEAN.JS project with current Node.js and JavaScript technology tools.

Already implemented:

Subject	MEAN.JS 1	Riess.js
Testing:Tools	supertest, mocha, should.js	request, ava
Testing:Tests Automation	All tests run as one task	separates tasks to unit tests, integration tests
Testing:ExpressJS	supertest wraps expressjs app	gulp instantiates a real ExpressJS API service
Testing:Seed	seeds based on global seed.js file, only user and pass	seed tasks resets the db/models to clear data and is separated to own gulp task
Developer:Community	commit guidelines advised in PR	uses commitizen to streamline commit guidelines
Developer:Debug	node-inspector (missing v7 support)	uses v7's builtin debug and inspect options
Node.js	v4	v7 with --harmony
Async Functionality	Callbacks	Async/Await and native Node.js Promise
SQL	N/A	Sequelize ORM

Planned:

Subject	MEAN.JS 1	Riess.js
Documentation:API	N/A	Swagger
Documentation:Code	N/A	Docco
Developer:Lint	MEAN.JS specific eslint rules	Standard JS

Ideas:

• RethinkDB or alternative?
• Redis
• JWT
• Replace existing implementation of social logins with Passport or consider integration with Auth0

Architecture

Directory Structure

To keep a technology agnostic and developer-freedom approach, Riess implements the following directory structure which de-couples the frontend project and the backend project completely. As such, they are developed in completely separated directories, each with it's own node modules, task runner, module builder, and so on.

It is depicted as follows:

server/
client/

This approach provides the following benefits:

• The server is completely de-coupled from the frontend, so anyone can take the server directory and use it for a pure API backend server that is suitable for microservices architecture, or just plug it in to another frontend project.
• The client providing the frontend project is not dependent on the server, and therefore a developer is free to implement their own client frontend code using create-react-app, angular-cli, or vue.js. The choice is yours.

About the name

Riess is named after Adam Riess, an astrophysicist who won the Nobel prize for providing evidence that our universe is in a state of accelerated expansion.

Greatly inspired, Riess.js seeks to provide a solid structure and flexible framework for improved developer experience and increased productivity, while staying in par with the accelerated pace of the JavaScript ecosystem.