How Apostrophe starts up

This tutorial covers how Apostrophe initializes itself. In the process, it provides insight into how you can influence that process and the best times to do things in your own modules.

Initialization of modules

When the application starts up, the modules initialize in the order found in node_modules/apostrophe/default.js, followed by any project level or npm modules, in the order configured in app.js.

Initialization of an individual module

When initializing, an individual module invokes beforeConstruct at project level first, then at npm module level; note that project level code runs first here to adjust the options if needed before the base class sees them. If a module extends another, the subclass runs first, again getting a chance to adjust options before the base class sees them.

Then construct runs for this module, this time starting with the base class, so that the subclasses can override methods assigned there.

Then afterConstruct runs for the module. Ideally construct doesn’t do anything but set up methods, so that afterConstruct can safely invoke them, knowing that any subclass overrides have already happened.

See the moog documentation (opens new window) for more information about beforeConstruct, construct and afterConstruct.

Running code after all modules are constructed

After all of the modules are initialized, Apostrophe invokes the modulesReady methods of any modules that have one, in the order those modules were initialized. This is a good time to do work that requires other modules initialized after yours.

Note that your modulesReady method may optionally take a callback.

If you are extending another module, be sure to check whether it already has a modulesReady method and invoke it via the super pattern if so.

Running code after modulesReady

The last thing Apostrophe does before listening for connections, or running the task in the case of a command line task, is invoking the afterInit method of any module that has one.

Like modulesReady, afterInit may also take a callback if it needs to do asynchronous work.

afterInit in app.js

You may also supply a top-level afterInit property in your app.js configuration. If provided this function must take a callback. We recommend using modulesReady or afterInit in a project-level module instead. Cluttering up app.js with executable code generally leads to hard-to-understand projects.