IBM Cloud Code Template

Bluemix supports IBM's MobileFirst strategy by allowing you as a mobile developer to quickly incorporate pre-built, managed, and scalable cloud services into your mobile applications without relying on IT involvement. You can focus on building your mobile applications rather than the complexities of managing the back end infrastructure.

When you create a Mobile Cloud Starter application, Bluemix provisions multiple services under a single application context. Your mobile application is given access to the following mobile services: Mobile Application Security, Push, and Mobile Data.

The Mobile Cloud Starter application also contains the default Cloud Code Template which includes following functionalities:

Modularized and extensible rest endpoints for calling cloudcode
Static file hosting

For more details, please read the code comments in app.js.

Extend it

IBM Cloud Code Template is running in node.js runtime. To develop your own code, open the app.js and edit the content with any text editor. There is no restriction on writing the node code, which means you can use any third party modules available on the web.

Modularized extension

The cloud code template is using express 4.x as the web application framework and Router api to moduralize REST endpoints. To extend it, you might:

Create a people.js file and place it under lib folder

Open the people.js file and write a mini express app with Router api:


var people = require('express').Router();

people.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
});

people.post('/', function(req, res, next) {
});

people.put('/', function(req, res, next) {
});

people.delete('/', function(req, res, next) {
});

module.exports = exports = people;

Map the mini express app you have just created to the cloud code context root in the app.js
```
app.use(ibmconfig.getContextRoot(), require('./lib/people.js'));
```

Test it

IBM Cloud Code Template is a standard node.js application. You can test it on your local workstation with the Bluemix environment context.

On local workstation

Download and install the node.js runtime
From the template app directory, run npm install --production to install the dependent modules
From the template app directory, run node app.js

The services in template app can be access from

http://localhost:3000/yourapplicationroute/v1/apps/yourapplicationid/*

For example, static file can be access at

http://localhost:3000/yourapplicationroute/v1/apps/yourapplicationid/public

Running with Bluemix environment context

To be able to test your application locally with Bluemix environment context, you need to:

Create a Mobile Cloud Starter application on Bluemix with name cloudcodetest
Download and install the Cloud Foundry CLI
Run cf login to log into your Bluemix orgnization and space where your Bluemix application is located

Create or download the manifest.yml and place it with app.js. The manifest.yml should look like:

applications:
- services:
  - testnewmab:MAS
  - testnewmab:Push
  - testnewmab:MobileData
  disk_quota: 1024M
  host: cloudcodetest
  name: cloudcodetest
  command: node app.js
  path: .
  domain: mybluemix.net
  instances: 1
  memory: 128M

Then run node app.js to start your application. The Bluemix environment context for application cloudcodetest will be automatically retrieved and added to your application.

Debug cloud code

Download and install node-inspector as a global module
From the template app directory, run node-debug app.js

Deploy to Bluemix

Download and install the Cloud Foundry CLI
From the template app directory, run cf push ${yourAppName} to deploy the app to Bluemix.

The services in template app can be access from ```

http://${yourAppHost}.mybluemix.net/${yourAppHost}/v1/apps/${applicationId}/*