Setup

Welcome to the first worksheet. In it you will be setting up your development environment using the Codeanywhere online IDE and running your first (static) website.

Codeanywhere

The first step is to configure the Codeanywhere IDE. Go the the Codeanywhere website and log in. You may need to create an account first.

Now you need to create a new Project by accessing the File menu as shown.

Next you will be prompted to create a new project. Give it the name 205CDE.

Finally you will need to add a new Container. You should add the NodeJS container running under Ubuntu as shown. Give it the name labs.

You now have an Ubuntu development environment running NodeJS.

2 Cloning the Lab Materials

Now we have to clone the repository containing the lab materials. Start by opening the TEACHING_MATERIALS repository on GitHub.

Click on the green Download button as shown and then copy this URL to the clipboard.

Now we need to use the Terminal that is built into Codeanywhere. If one is not open you can right-click on the container in the sidebar (called labs) and choose the SSH Terminal option from the dropdown menu.

$ git clone https://.../TEACHING-MATERIALS.git .
  Cloning into '.'...
  remote: Counting objects: 1692, done.
  remote: Compressing objects: 100% (102/102), done.
  remote: Total 1692 (delta 26), reused 109 (delta 18), pack-reused 1572
  Receiving objects: 100% (1692/1692), 13.82 MiB | 918.00 KiB/s, done.
  Resolving deltas: 100% (690/690), done.
  Checking connectivity... done.

This will have created a clone of the repository in your Codeanywhere container. Right-click on the labs container again and choose refresh to reload the sidebar and this should display the files.

Arranging the IDE

The final step before running your first website is to organise the windows of the IDE. Right-click on the tab bar as shown and choose Split Horizontal from the context menu as shown.

Now select the bottom pane then open the SSH Terminal. By selecting the bottom pane first you are telling Codeanywhere that is where the window should open.

If you now open the exercises/01_setup/index.js file you will see this also opens in the bottom pane. We want it at the top so drag its tab to the top tab bar.

Finally you can drag the divider down a bit to make the top pane larger. The final result should look a like this:

You are now ready to start your lab exercises.

Hello World

Your first task is to check that everything is correctly configured by running a hello world exercise.

Use the SSH Terminal to navigate to the exercises/01_setup/ directory.

$ cd exercises/01_setup/
$ ls

Now we will try to run the index.js script.

$ node index.js
  module.js:544
    throw err;
    ^
  Error: Cannot find module 'express'

Notice we get an error! if you study the index.js file you will see that on line 4 we import a module called express but this has not been installed.

$ npm install express
$ node index.js
  app listening on port 8080

Now the script is running on port 8080, its time to view the web page. Right-click on the labs container and choose the Info option.

This will display some useful information which we will need. You are looking for the URL of your container (this will NOT be the same as that shown in the screenshot.)

Now open a new browser tab and paste in this URL, adding the correct port number that our script is running on. For my example the URL is http://labs-marktyers842735.codeanyapp.com:8080. If everything is working correctly you should see the text hello world in the browser.

Editing the Output

Lets try changing the displayed message. We need to stop the script. Select the SSH Terminal and press ctrl+c which will return you to the shell prompt.

Now edit the message (index.js, line 11) so it will display your name. Restart the script and then refresh your browser window.