Before you begin we recommend you read about the basic building blocks that assemble a MEAN.JS application:

• MongoDB - Go through MongoDB Official Website and proceed to their Official Manual, which should help you understand NoSQL and MongoDB better.
• Express - The best way to understand express is through its Official Website, which has a Getting Started guide, as well as an ExpressJS guide for general express topics. You can also go through this StackOverflow Thread for more resources.
• AngularJS - Angular's Official Website is a great starting point. You can also use Thinkster Popular Guide, and Egghead Videos.
• Node.js - Start by going through Node.js Official Website and this StackOverflow Thread, which should get you going with the Node.js platform in no time.

Make sure you have installed all of the following prerequisites on your development machine:

• Git - Download & Install Git. OSX and Linux machines typically have this already installed.
• Node.js - Download & Install Node.js and the npm package manager. If you encounter any problems, you can also use this GitHub Gist to install Node.js.
  • Node v5 IS NOT SUPPORTED AT THIS TIME!
• MongoDB - Download & Install MongoDB, and make sure it's running on the default port (27017).
• Ruby - Download & Install Ruby
• Bower - You're going to use the Bower Package Manager to manage your front-end packages. Make sure you've installed Node.js and npm first, then install bower globally using npm:

$ npm install -g bower

• Grunt - You're going to use the Grunt Task Runner to automate your development process. Make sure you've installed Node.js and npm first, then install grunt globally using npm:

$ npm install -g grunt-cli

• Sass - You're going to use Sass to compile CSS during your grunt task. Make sure you have ruby installed, and then install Sass using gem install:

$ gem install sass

• Gulp - (Optional) You may use Gulp for Live Reload, Linting, and SASS or LESS.

$ npm install gulp -g

There are several ways you can get the MEAN.JS boilerplate:

The recommended way to get MEAN.js is to use git to directly clone the MEAN.JS repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/meanjs/mean.git meanjs

This will clone the latest version of the MEAN.JS repository to a meanjs folder.

Another way to use the MEAN.JS boilerplate is to download a zip copy from the master branch on GitHub. You can also do this using wget command:

$ wget https://github.com/meanjs/mean/archive/master.zip -O meanjs.zip; unzip meanjs.zip; rm meanjs.zip

Don't forget to rename mean-master after your project name.

Another way would be to use the Official Yo Generator, which generates a copy of the MEAN.JS 0.4.x boilerplate and supplies an application generator to ease your daily development cycles.

Once you've downloaded the boilerplate and installed all the prerequisites, you're just a few steps away from starting to develop your MEAN application.

The first thing you should do is install the Node.js dependencies. The boilerplate comes pre-bundled with a package.json file that contains the list of modules you need to start your application. To learn more about the modules installed visit the npm & Package.json section.

To install Node.js dependencies you're going to use npm again. In the application folder run this in the command-line:

$ npm install

This command does a few things:

• First it will install the dependencies needed for the application to run.
• If you're running in a development environment, it will then also install development dependencies needed for testing and running your application.
• Finally, when the install process is over, npm will initiate a bower install command to install all the front-end modules needed for the application

After the install process is over, you'll be able to run your application using Grunt, just run grunt default task:

$ grunt

Your application should run on port 3000 with the development environment configuration, so in your browser just go to http://localhost:3000

That's it! Your application should be running. To proceed with your development, check the other sections in this documentation. If you encounter any problems, try the Troubleshooting section.

• explore config/env/development.js for development environment configuration options

To run your application with production environment configuration, execute grunt as follows:

$ grunt prod

• explore config/env/production.js for production environment configuration options

To have default account(s) seeded at runtime:

In Development:

MONGO_SEED=true grunt

It will try to seed the users 'user' and 'admin'. If one of the user already exists, it will display an error message on the console. Just grab the passwords from the console.

In Production:

MONGO_SEED=true grunt prod

This will seed the admin user one time if the user does not already exist. You have to copy the password from the console and save it.

Application will start by default with secure configuration (SSL mode) turned on and listen on port 8443. To run your application in a secure manner you'll need to use OpenSSL and generate a set of self-signed certificates. Unix-based users can use the following command:

$ sh ./scripts/generate-ssl-certs.sh

Windows users can follow instructions found here. After you've generated the key and certificate, place them in the config/sslcerts folder.

Finally, execute grunt's prod task grunt prod

• enable/disable SSL mode in production environment change the secure option in config/env/production.js

You can run the full test suite included with MEAN.JS with the test task:

$ grunt test