OR2017 DSpace Angular Workshop

Preparing for "Hands-on" portion of workshop

For the hands-on portion of the workshop, we will be working directly with the dspace-angular project (this is the in-development Angular UI for DSpace 7).  However, don't worry. It's rather easy to install, and you do not need to install DSpace itself (as we have a public REST API we'll be using).

Requirements

If you wish to take part in the "hands-on" portion of our workshop, we recommend pre-installing the following on your laptop.  (If you forget, or run into issues, don't worry. Each of these should be rather quick to install at the workshop, internet connection permitting.)

• Git :You'll want to have Git to simply clone and install our dspace-angular project (this is the in-development Angular UI for DSpace 7). If you don't have Git, you can choose to install either GitHub Desktop (which includes a GUI) or just plain Git. Any version of Git is fine.
• Node.js (version 6.x recommended) : Required to build/run the Angular UI.
  • Note: Node.js will also automatically install npm (Node Package Manager). You shouldn't need to install that separately
• Yarn (version 0.20.x or above) : This is an easier to use / and speedier package manager that simply "wraps" npm (Node's package manager). It's currently required to build Angular UI.
• dspace-angular: If you get excited, you can now install dspace-angular itself using the command line. However, if you don't get to this, we can walk you through it at the workshop.
  1. git clone https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular.git   (Pulls down the code into a dspace-angular folder on your local computer)
  2. cd dspace-angular (Move into the newly created dspace-angular folder)
  3. yarn run global     (Install all global dependencies via yarn)
  4. yarn install           (Install all local dependencies via yarn)
  5. yarn server             (Build and startup the DSpace Angular UI)
  6. Assuming all went well, you should be able to go to http://localhost:3000 in your web browser and see the Angular UI homepage.  If something doesn't work, we can help you fix it at the workshop.

That's it! Again, there is no need to have DSpace running or install a database, Java, Tomcat or any of the other usual DSpace prerequisites.  During the workshop, we will point our Angular UIs at the same REST API and simply use that as our DSpace backend.

Development Tools

While not required, the following tools may make it a bit easier to do basic development with the Angular UI.

• Chrome web browser : When developing an Angular application, all web browsers are not created equal. While you obviously should use other browsers to help test your application, Chrome has built in debugging/visualization tools that come in handy when doing Angular development.
• An IDE : If you wish to do much Angular development, you'll likely want an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) or an editor that understands the TypeScript language.  Here's a few we prefer. Just choose ONE (or really any other editor you wish). If you have no strong preference yourself, you may want to start with Visual Studio Code.
  • Visual Studio Code (Free) : This is a TypeScript IDE from Microsoft (the makers of TypeScript). It's frequently used for Angular development, even by some of the main Angular developers, and provides an excellent debugger for Chrome (which you may also wish to install for easier debugging)
  • Intellij (Requires a license) : If you use IntelliJ already for other development work, IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate has TypeScript support. You could also use WebStorm, IntelliJ's Javascript IDE
  • Atom.io (Free) : This is an advanced text editor from the makers of GitHub. If you install the Typescript language plugin, it acts a little more like a basic IDE for TypeScript / Angular (providing autocomplete and highlighting).  However, be forewarned that it doesn't have the debugging capabilities of Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ.
  • Any other editor or IDE that provides either TypeScript or Angular 2 support.