Proto

Proto is a front-end web prototyping tool, combining markup (Pug), script (CoffeeScript), and style (Sass) into a single page. It creates a set of files each representing one of those three facets of the page, plus files for notes and settings, and serves up their rendered form. Every time the page is loaded, those files are compiled on-the-fly. It's helpful for creating prototypes using CoffeeScript, Jade, and Stylus, without having to set up a build process and environment. CJSX is supported, and Proto is particularly handy for prototyping React components.

• Repository
• Issues
• Example Proto project as Gist

Installation

Proto is a command-line tool built in Node, specifically CoffeeScript, and is available through npm.

$ npm install -g proto-cli

or from source

$ git clone git://github.com/marquee/proto.git
$ cd proto
$ npm install         (this will fail at the postinstall step, but that’s okay)
$ cake build
$ npm install -g

cake build will compile src/*.coffee into lib/*.js (ignored by git).

Proto needs to be installed globally using -g so it can create the necessary command in /usr/local/bin.

Usage

Init

$ proto -i
$ proto -i 
$ proto -ig  []

Initializes the project by creating a folder with a generated name or specified name and adding five files: markup.jade, script.coffee, style.styl, settings.json, and notes.md.

e.g. $ proto -i my_project creates a folder called my_project in the current working directory

my_project/
    markup.pug        - the source for the markup code
    script.coffee     - the source for the script code
    style.sass        - the source for the style code
    settings.json     - settings for the project, specifically extra libraries to include into the page
    notes.md          - a place for extra notes

Omitting the project name will result in a name following the format proto-YYYYMMDD-N, where N is an incremental counter starting at 1 and increasing until it is a unique project name for that folder.

You can also load a Gisted project (see below for how to create one). proto -ig [] will initialize a Proto project using the specified gist as the template, with the name specified in its settings.json or the optional specified name.

To initialize a React project, which has a CDN-hosted copy of React library and some basic boilerplate instead of the usual libraries, use the -r flag when initializing: proto -ir react_component.

Work on a project

To serve the project at localhost:5000:

$ proto 

Or specify a port:

$ proto  -p 8080

This starts a server that serves the compiled markup, script, style, as well as any additional files, on the specified port (default 5000). The source files are compiled every time the page is requested.

The source files are compiled and inserted into a full html template. Libraries specified in settings.json, and the CSS compiled from style.sass, are added to the of the page. `markup.pug` gets compiled to HTML and inserted into the, and script.coffee gets compiled to JavaScript and added to the end of the ``. (Take a peak at the Proto source for the full template it uses.) Additional files, like images, will be served as well.

settings.json

To have additional libraries loaded, list them in script_libraries or style_libraries. Any extra markup to be inserted into the , like viewport-width tags, can be specified in extra_head_markup.

Libraries

Libraries MUST be listed as a string that is the URL to a remote file:

'https://example.com/some/remote/lib.js',
'https://example.com/other/remote/lib2.js',
...

The libraries will be inserted in order, to allow for dependencies to be loaded correctly (eg jQuery before Backbone). Libraries for a given project that are hosted remotely, on a CDN for example, can be downloaded to ~/.proto-cli/libraries using the proto -d option. When rendering the compiled page, Proto will check to see if that library has been cached locally, and will insert the local URL into the page instead.

Make sure to include the library version in the URL if possible to avoid conflicts in the cache. Libraries are cached using an MD5 of the URL. This way, different versions will not collide as long as the URLs are different. For example, CDNJS does not include the version in the actual filename, (…libs/jquery/1.7/jquery.js vs …libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.js), so multiple versions of jQuery would collide under jquery.js. However, the MD5s are completely different (c36f7e58025607909f55666dfdda14cc vs 2a14fb1f1041bd6596c3c083bbc32437).

Migrations

Projects created with older versions of Proto can be upgraded to the current version, using the -m option, eg $ proto -m . This will perform the necessary migrations to make the project compatible, usually involving modifying the settings.

Gist a project

To create a GitHub Gist with the project's contents:

$ proto -g 
$ proto -g  --public

This will upload the five main files in the specified project folder to an anonymous Gist. By default, the Gist is private. Adding the --public flag will make it a public Gist. But, anonymous Gists aren't terribly useful besides one-off sharing, so Authenticated Gists are recommended. For authenticated Gists, proto -g can be used again to update the Gist.

Note: this will not add any additional files in the project to the Gist, since the Gist API does not support adding binary files. However, you may add those manually with git once the Gist has been created. Subsequent proto -g will include those files after they are added to the repo.

Authenticated

To create the Gist under your username, first authenticate with GitHub using:

$ proto --github  
$ proto --github  ""

This will use the GitHub API to generate an access token that is stored in ~/.proto-cli. Your username and password are never stored.

Now, all Gists you create will be associated with your account. This has several benefits, including making the Proto project a git repo with the remote set to the Gist, so you can keep updating the Proto's Gist. Using proto -g on a project that has already been Gisted with authentication will commit and push your changes to the same Gist, instead of creating a new one.

Viewer

Proto includes a web viewer running at proto.es, which will render the specified Gist the same as the command-line would. It allows for easy sharing of the rendered Proto project, even specific versions of it (since it's just a git repo). However, it will not support extra files in Gists, particularly images which cannot be read through the API.

Example with the sample project: proto.es/3894924 (older revision)

The viewer is running on Heroku, with an alternate url that also works: proto-cli.herokuapp.com. You can run your own viewer if you like. It's a Node-based web app located in viewer/app.coffee.

Note: Marquee does have analytics code on the viewer, so we can monitor usage and make improvements. But, this code is only added to the page if the Gist is public, and only tracks from the proto.es and proto-cli.herokuapp.com domains. See exactly what it does in the source.

Developing

To use the from-source version of Proto without having to install it, cake build && ./bin/proto will compile and run Proto.

Authors

• Alec Perkins (Marquee)
• Alex Cabrera (Marquee)

License

Unlicensed aka Public Domain. See /LICENSE for more information.