Express App Generator

Boilerplate and tooling for authoring data API backends with Node.js, JWT and MongoDB. It is best suited for developing a es6 API endpoint as a standalone (micro)service (demo), backing up web front-ends and/or mobile apps. This Generator will help to us create a express api application skeleton along with these keys features

  • components Style coding
  • Eslint Standard style guide
  • JWT authentication
  • Test cases with Mocha
  • Docker
  • Swagger API doc

Requirements

Report

  • Report any issues or feature enhancements in our tracker

Contents

Stepup ENV

Steps to create a node application skeleton:

$ npm install -g yo
$ npm install -g generator-node-api-boilerplate
$ yo node-api-boilerplate

Now the app was created and start running in your system

Usage

start the express server:

$ npm start

Test The unit testcases:

$ npm test

clean build folder and compile the source code:

$ npm run start:dev

find Lint issues in source code:

$ npm run lint

find Lint issues in test cases:

$ npm run lint:test

Note

npm run lint:test:fix and npm run lint:fix used to fix the lint errors

Project Structure

Your project will look like this:

├── package.json
├── public
│   ├── logs
│   |   └── access.log
|   ├── docs
|   |    └── swagger.json
|   |
├── README.md
├── src
│   ├── app
│   │   └── auth
│   │       ├── AuthRoute.js
│   │       ├── UserController.js
│   │       ├── UserMiddlerware.js
│   │       ├── UserModel.js
│   │       ├── UserRoute.js
│   │       └── UserService.js
│   ├── config
│   │   ├── db
│   │   │   └── connection.js
│   │   ├── environments
│   │   │   ├── config.js
│   │   │   ├── development.js
│   │   │   ├── index.js
│   │   │   ├── production.js
│   │   │   └── test.js
│   │   ├── express-middleware.js
│   │   ├── logger.js
│   │   └── route
│   │       ├── route.index.js
│   │       └── routes.js
│   └── server.js
├── test
│   ├── index.js
│   ├── shared.spec.js
│   └── users
│       └── users.spec.js

src

src is the source code directory:

├── src
│   ├── app
│   │
│   ├── config
│   │
│   └── server.js
  • app contains all needed components
  • config has all the configurations like DB, ENV
  • server.js is the app boostrap file

Structure your solution by components

Instead of MVC pattern we recommended components based pattern:

├── src
│   ├── app
│   │   └── auth
│   │       ├── AuthRoute.js
│   │       ├── UserController.js
│   │       ├── UserMiddlerware.js
│   │       ├── UserModel.js
│   │       ├── UserRoute.js
│   │       └── UserService.js
  • auth is the component name and that contains route, Controller, middleware, model, and the service files.

config

  • Config folder structure:

    ├── src
|   ├── config
│   │   ├── db
│   │   │   └── connection.js
│   │   ├── environments
│   │   ├── express-middleware.js
│   │   ├── logger.js
│   │   └── route

  • DB holds the information of MongoDB connection

  • environments use to define ENV variables. We can set different values for different ENV.

  • express-middleware deines express middleware need to run this app

  • logger.js logger details are defined here

  • route creating interface between our components (indeside src/app ) and application.

├── src
|   ├── config
│   │   ├── environments
│   │   │   ├── config.js
│   │   │   ├── development.js
│   │   │   ├── index.js
│   │   │   ├── production.js
│   │   │   └── test.js
config.js

It holds common ENV variables across all environments. development, production, and the``test`` are extends this file.

route
├── src
|   ├── config
│   │   └── route
    │   │       ├── route.index.js
    │   │       └── routes.js

Need to link our components in routes.js like this

import UserRoute from '../../app/auth/UserRoute';

const Routes = [
{
    url: 'users',
    route: UserRoute,
    gaurd: false
}
];

export default Routes;
  • url group name of api endpoint
  • route component route object
  • gaurd (optional) if you want to skip JWT verification set false. By default it sets true

API

Integrated `swagger API Doc <https://www.npmjs.com/package/swagger-ui-express >`_. By default it loads in root path.

You can change the API doc path in code (/src/config/express-middleware.js).

[swagger] () {
    this.exApp.use('/', swaggerUi.serve, swaggerUi.setup(swaggerDocument, {}));
}