how to deploy your dart app (using Web ui) without using Pub Deploy - dart

Question

What is the best strategy to deploy a Dart Web-ui app manually ?
pub deploy doesn't work for me and I have raised bug report. So am thinking what is the best way to manually deploy.
This is how I started:
1) From project root I compile the webui components (dwc.dart)
2) change directory to web/out then run dart2js
3) copy all .js files into that scripts/js public folder on server
4) copy appname.html to server changing css and script paths to option 3
5) Make sure dart.js is also in the same directory as item 3
this is as far as I got. So what else do I need to do ?
A few questions:
1) Do I manually change the file paths in the generated .js files to point to public folders on server for the files they are referencing and make sure those files are on server also ?
2) Do I need to copy all packages to server also ?
3) Any preferred file structure on server?
Any tips on this really appreciated.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I wrote a Grunt script for it (since I had no time to look up how to properly write code for Grunt, I did not share the code since it's a mess) but I basically do this:
compiling a list of files with dwc to a given out dir
compile it to javascript
clean up all non-deployable files
change some paths inside the HTML to match the server paths (for some reasons, this gets changed by the compilation process)
remove all packages except the ones I really need (JS interopt and browser)
Since I'm only using the JS version, I remove all dart packages. Since the paths inside the HTML files are up to you, you can already use a structure that suits you/your server.

Answer 2

I can provide you with a Grunt script to understand the order of tasks. Practically the order I use is this one:
Create the build directory. I usually use /build/web. I usually create these files (index.html, main.dart, /css and so on into the /web dir). I create the rest of components into /lib directory.
Compile the .dart file that contains the main() function ("main.dart" in my case for simpler projects) file to Javascript and put it into /build/web directory
Copy the other needed files and folders to the /build/web directory. Also, during this process you'll be copying the packages that your project needs. You'll see in the example provided below.
Remove all empty folders from the project
You can create a Grunt task to open the /index.html file in the browser once the building process has ended (I will not provide this example)
The structure of the dart test project:
testApp
- gruntfile.js
- package.js
/lib
/packages
/angular
/web
- index.html
- main.dart
/css
/img
So, the Grunt example script to cover steps from 1 - 4 looks like this (copy it to gruntfile.js):
module.exports = function (grunt) {
grunt.initConfig({
// 1.
// create build web directory
mkdir: {
build: {
options: {
create: ['build/web']
}
}
},
// 2.
// compile dart files
dart2js: {
options: {
// use this to fix a problem into dart2js node module. The module calls dart2js not dart2js.bat.
// this is needed for Windows. So use the path to your dart2js.bat file
"dart2js_bin": "C:/dart/dart-sdk/bin/dart2js.bat"
},
compile: {
files: {'build/web/main.dart.js': 'web/main.dart'}
}
},
// 3.
// copy all needed files, including all needed packages
// except the .dart files.
copy: {
build: {
files: [
{
expand: true,
src: [
'web/!(*.dart)',
'web/css/*.css',
'web/res/*.svg',
'web/packages/angular/**/!(*.dart)',
'web/packages/browser/**/!(*.dart)'
],
dest: 'build'
}
]
}
},
// 4.
// remove empty directories copied using the previous task
cleanempty: {
build: {
options: {
files: false
},
src: ['build/web/packages/**/*']
}
},
});
require('matchdep').filterDev('grunt-*').forEach(grunt.loadNpmTasks);
grunt.registerTask('default', [
'mkdir:build',
'dart2js',
'copy:build',
'cleanempty:build'
]);
};
So this is the Grunt script example.
Create a /gruntfile.js file into your project's root directory and copy/paste the script to it.
Create a /package.json file into your project's root directory and copy/paste the following script:
{
"name": "testApp",
"version": "0.0.1",
"description": "SomeDescriptionForTheTestApp",
"main": "",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
},
"author": "YourName",
"peerDependencies": {
"grunt-cli": "^0.1.13"
},
"devDependencies": {
"grunt": "^0.4.5",
"grunt-cleanempty": "^1.0.3",
"grunt-contrib-copy": "^0.7.0",
"grunt-dart2js": "0.0.5",
"grunt-mkdir": "^0.1.2",
"matchdep": "^0.3.0"
}
}
Open Command Prompt in Windows, Terminal in Linux, navigate to your project's root directory and use this command:
npm install
Wait untill all Grunt modules needed will be downloaded to your local project. Once this is finished, issue this command in Command Prompt or Terminal:
node -e "require('grunt').cli()"
You can use this to initiate Grunt default task without having Grunt installed globally on your system.
Now, to know the exact build structure for your project (including the packages that the project needs), make a build using Pub Build. Then you will be able to instruct Grunt to create the same dir structure.
You can add other tasks (like minification) if you want.
Hope this will help you all to understand the process and get you started with a test app first. Add your comments to make this even better and simplify it even more.