Polymer App Toolbox - Drawer Template

This template is a starting point for building apps using a drawer-based layout. The layout is provided by app-layout elements.

This template, along with the polymer-cli toolchain, also demonstrates use of the "PRPL pattern" This pattern allows fast first delivery and interaction with the content at the initial route requested by the user, along with fast subsequent navigation by pre-caching the remaining components required by the app and progressively loading them on-demand as the user navigates through the app.

The PRPL pattern, in a nutshell:

• Push components required for the initial route
• Render initial route ASAP
• Pre-cache components for remaining routes
• Lazy-load and progressively upgrade next routes on-demand

Setup

Prerequisites

Install polymer-cli:

npm install -g polymer-cli

Initialize project from template

mkdir my-app
cd my-app
polymer init app-drawer-template

Start the development server

This command serves the app at http://localhost:8080 and provides basic URL routing for the app:

polymer serve

Build

This command performs HTML, CSS, and JS minification on the application dependencies, and generates a service-worker.js file with code to pre-cache the dependencies based on the entrypoint and fragments specified in polymer.json. The minified files are output to the build/unbundled folder, and are suitable for serving from a HTTP/2+Push compatible server.

In addition the command also creates a fallback build/bundled folder, generated using fragment bundling, suitable for serving from non H2/push-compatible servers or to clients that do not support H2/Push.

polymer build

Test the build

This command serves the minified version of the app in an unbundled state, as it would be served by a push-compatible server:

polymer serve build/unbundled

This command serves the minified version of the app generated using fragment bundling:

polymer serve build/bundled

Extend

You can extend the app by adding more elements that will be demand-loaded e.g. based on the route, or to progressively render non-critical sections of the application. Each new demand-loaded fragment should be added to the list of fragments in the included polymer.json file. This will ensure those components and their dependencies are added to the list of pre-cached components (and will have bundles created in the fallback bundled build).