[Spike] Integrate IBM Cloud Yeoman generator with LoopBack

[dhmlau]

Timeboxed to a week and a half

Description / Steps to reproduce / Feature proposal

Goal

The goal is to allow users to create a Cloud Native LoopBack 4 application from the IBM Cloud App Service Starter Kits.

Originated from https://github.com/strongloop-internal/scrum-apex/issues/375.

As-is scenario

Currently, if users want to deploy LoopBack app to IBM Cloud, here is the user experience:

• Go to IBM Cloud App Service Starter Kits
• Create a Node.js based application from a starter kit, for example, Express.js Basic or Express.js Backend starter kit
• After it got created, click Download Code button to download the application to local environment
• Put in LB4 artifacts into the app (possibly scaffold a LB4 app separately and copy over the files)

To-be scenario

• Go to [IBM Cloud App Service Starter Kits]
• Pick a "LoopBack 4 application" starter kit (doesn't exist today)
• User gets prompted with a few questions useful to scaffold a LB4 app, e.g.
  • LB4 project folder name
  • LB4 application class name
• User click "Create Application".
• As a result, a Loopback 4 application is created
• Users can click "Download Code" to continue development of the LB app

Acceptance Criteria

• Find out the json schema of the json file that the cloud yeoman generator is looking for.
  • we have a sample json now. we need to get the schema/spec info
• Find out the options to pass in that json to the generator.
  • whether a file, standard in, etc
• Investigate how we can integrate with the cloud Yeoman generator
  • how to invoke it. what are their inputs.
• Find out what we need (besides project folder name and application class name) in order to generate a very basic LB4 app

Out of scope

• integrate with other services on IBM Cloud
• generate json content that is not needed for a very simple LB4 app

[dhmlau]

@hacksparrow , not that we're starting this task now.. From our last discussion with Raymond and Miroslav, the next step is for you to find out the json schema of the json file that the cloud yeoman generator is looking for (point1 in the original description). Any news?

[dhmlau]

I'd like to remove this from LB4 GA release because for the cloud story, our first priority is to deploy LoopBack application to IBM Cloud (which will be completed in Sept milestone with future enhancements).

[stale]

This issue has been marked stale because it has not seen activity within six months. If you believe this to be in error, please contact one of the code owners, listed in the CODEOWNERS file at the top-level of this repository. This issue will be closed within 30 days of being stale.

[dhmlau]

Things have changed quite a bit since the creation of this issue. Now that LoopBack has been added as one of the application stacks in Appsody, this task may not be relevant. Closing this issue.