1. Description
2. Project Structure
3. How to install
4. How to run

It uses Little Qairoes' boilerplate project template is a starting point for building apps using the REACH template.

This template, along with polymer-cli toolchain, demostrates the use of "PRPL pattern". This pattern allows fast first delivery and interaction with the the content at the initial route requested by the user.

PRPL pattern, in a nutshell, is:

• Push components required for the initial route
• Render initial route ASAP
• Pre-cache components for remaining routes
• Lazy-load and progressively upgrade next routes on-demend

The project development structure consists of this...

/
|--bower_components/
|
|--images/
|   |--manifest/
|   |--favicon.ico
|
|--pages/
|
|--src/
|   |--project-madhouse-app.html
|
|--web-components/
|
|--test/
|
|--bower.json
|
|--index.html
|
|--manifest.json
|
|--polymer.json
|
|--service-worker.js
|
|--sw-precache-config.js

• bower_components/ is where reusable custom elements and/or libraries are fetched via bower (or put in bower.json) will go
• images/ is where we put all our static image assets. It includes the following folders and files (files inside are configurable):
  • manifest/ holds icon branding for the website. See https://goo.gl/OOhYW5 for details. (Files inside are configurable).
  • favicon.ico is the icon that we see at the tab (configurable/replacable)
• pages/ is where all your custom-made page elements will go
• src/ is where your application-specific root-element will go
  • project-madhouse-app.html is the main core element called in the index.html that renders the pages.
• web-components/ is where reusable custom elements that are not published or just for this project will go
• test/ holds all integrated test cases for continuous integration and making sure that changes in the app doesn't break the app. (files inside are configurable)
• bower.json is a configurable file that holds all direct dependencies of the project.
• index.html is the main entry point of the application. (we need to talk about how to configure the loader)
• manifest.json is a configurable file to make the webapp look like a mobile app. See https://goo.gl/OOhYW5 for details.
• polymer.json is a configurable file that holds all options for entry points and fragments for building the reach polymer app using the polymer build command.
• service-worker.js is a default file to be used for building. It will be populated once the polymer build command has been called
• sw-precache-config.js is a configurable file that configures how the service-worker.js will be built. See https://github.com/GoogleChrome/sw-precache

Install polymer-cli:

npm install -g polymer-cli

TODO: Talk about how to build this boilerplate here later on using https://github.com/PolymerElements/generator-polymer-init-custom-build. This will be use gulp more extensively

This command serves the app at http://localhost:8080 and provides basic URL routing for the app

polymer serve

This command performs HTML, CSS, and JS minification on the application dependencies, and generates a service-worker.js file with code to pre-cache the dependencies based on the entrypoint and fragments specified in polymer.json. The minified files are output to the build/unbundled folder, and are suitable for serving from a HTTP/2+Push compatible server.

In addition the command also creates a fallback build/bundled folder, generated using fragment bundling, suitable for serving from non H2/push-compatible servers or to clients that do not support H2/Push.

polymer build

• this creates two folders
  • build/bundled - vulcanizes and minifies all files. Much faster in loading than unbundled version when HTTP/2.0 is turned off
  • build/unbundled - retains the structure of dev but minifies all css and javascript files. Useful if deployed in HTTP/2.0 ready server/CDN

These set of commands serves the minified version of the app at http://localhost:8080

runs the generated production build using fragment bundling

polymer serve build/bundled

runs the unbundled state, as it would be served by a push-compatible server

polymer serve build/unbundled

This command will run Web Component Tester against the browsers currently installed on your machine.

polymer test