I saw in the README you use Sequelize ORM, but what if I want to use a NoSQL DB? Should I delete this dependency and refactor the code?

If this is the case, maybe there is a better way, an ORM for SQL and NoSQL DBs something like waterline.

Currently config/lib/express.js is using the old node.js module.exports style.
Change it to use ES6 Classes.

Currently, MEAN.JS is very monolithic. API modules are integrated fairly tightly into the server application when they could be encapsulated as modules and kept independent of the application.

Essentially, my suggestion is to turn Riess into a shell-server whose API endpoints are plugged in and bootstrapped at application start. We could bake in some modules like for user and and auth endpoints, but keep everything else separate.

An architecture like this would ideally provide the following benefits:

• improved stability of the core server shell -- some code churn would be isolated to endpoint modules

• improved maintenance of downstream projects -- Ideally, the core shell of downstream projects would be more similar to the origin/master and thus bug fixes and improvements would be easier to merge. I've found that most of the changes I make in my MEAN.JS downstream projects are related to the user module. If this were encapsulated separately, it would be easier to merge security updates from the master branch

• Just thought of this one... downstream projects could even consume the shell application as a module which would be awesome from a maintenance standpoint. Updating the shell for bug fix and security updates would be as simple as running yarn or npm upgrade

• a more flexible architecture that users could independently write plugins for to provide additional functionality -- I'm currently working on a project that is conceptually similar to a microservice marketplace. I started with MEAN.JS, but ended up changing a lot as the architecture required me to make a monolithic application when ideally, I would put each microservice in its own repository and require it in to the shell. Right now, I'm doing all the development myself, but my vision is to eventually provide a platform that other people could ~~~contribute to and write their own microservices for or even~~~ roll their own custom service using my application as a starting point.

There are a few downsides that I can think of:

• Fairly large refactor
• Dependency hell if the core shell is maintained poorly and churns its interfaces too much

Edit: The part I struck through was dumb and half baked, but I think the rest is still good

Session store currently requires MongoDB/Redis stores available.
Instead, rely on in-memory store unless prompted otherwise from configuration and then apply the given session store.

In order to de-couple the framework business form the app/business logic business I was thinking of creating the following directory structure:

 - lib/    - all the library bootstrapping, services, etc, goes here
 - lib/core/express.js
 - lib/core/config.js
 - lib/connectors/mongoose.js
 - app/    - user own app logic. inside there will be a modules/ directory to hold a vertical modules structure
 - app/modules/
 - app/modules/helloworld/
 - app/modules/helloworld/controllers/
 - app/modules/helloworld/routes/
 - app/modules/helloworld/tests/
 - db/     - database migrations, seeds, etc. will probably need to support more than one db (sequelize, mongoose, etc)
 - db/mongodb/migrations/
 - db/sql/migrations/

Since Riess.js is API-centric the view engine isn't relevant and should be removed from express.js

I managed to config MEAN to work with Angular-cli using the proxy and concurrently method, now a question I read some where in the posts...cant seam to find it now, about not using an api method call to retrieve the shared-configs and User on the client side since the html index is held by the cli something about not rushing through the door....anyway why is that a bad idea, also will you change to token authentication and will Angular be based on ngrx.

To many questions sorry, but I had given up on Angular....why upgrade and returned to my other studies, that was until I read about Progressive Web Apps pulled me right back in...will this option be included in the upcoming release

Hello,

I start the Front-End part with Angular + Angular-CLI + Angular Material (for the moment).
I'm thinking about keeping gulp to build the front-End or should use angular-cli ?

@lirantal @mleanos

Old mean.js uses a combination of mocha, should and related libraries.
I had some experience with ava.js (in riess.js, at work and some other libraries) but I'm leaning towards jest which seems to be the de-facto one from facebook so we win on having one tool for both frontend and backend.

WDYT?

Due to some work on configuration management and handling at work I have some ideas on how we can make it better:

• Configuration file should be just one, to encapsulate all config items regardless of environments.
• Environments shouldn't be exposed in code. Code should check configuration items, not environment its on.
• Configuration should be moderated through a configuration service so you can access items like config.get('dbHost', 'localhost') providing the key, and a default value if not exists. This allows to later extend configuration items beyond files (such as key/value store like consul), implement time-to-live to refresh config items, etc.