Express TypeScript Boilerplate

This repo can be used as a starting point for backend development with Nodejs. It comes bundled with Docker and is CI/CD optimized. The development environment uses docker-compose to start dependent services like mongo.

A few things to note in the project:

• Dockerfile - Dockerfile to generate docker builds.
• docker-compose - Docker compose script to start service in production mode.
• Containerized Mongo for development - Starts a local mongo container with data persistence across runs.
• Mongo Connection Helper - A helper class to connect to MongoDB reliably.
• Middleware for easier async/await - Catches errors from routes and throws them to express error handler to prevent app crash due to uncaught errors.
• OpenAPI 3.0 Spec - A starter template to get started with API documentation using OpenAPI 3.0. This API spec is also available when running the development server at http://localhost:3000/dev/api-docs
• .env file for configuration - Change server config like app port, mongo url etc
• Winston Logger - Uses winston as the logger for the application.
• ESLINT + Prettier - ESLINT is configured with Prettier for easy linting.
• Jest - Using Jest for running test cases
• Travis CI - Pre-configured to a sample Travis CI pipepline for linting, building and running the test suite.

Installation

1. Install dependencies

npm i

Development

Start dev server

Starting the dev server also starts MongoDB as a service in a docker container using the compose script at docker-compose.dev.yml.

npm run dev

Running the above commands results in

• 🌏API Server running at http://localhost:3000
• ⚙️Swagger UI at http://localhost:3000/__VERSION__/dev/api-docs
• 🛢️MongoDB running at mongodb://localhost:27017

Packaging and Deployment

1. Run with docker-compose

docker-compose up

2. Run with docker

docker build -t api-server .
docker run -t -i -p 3000:3000 api-server

3. Build and run

npm run build && npm run start

---

Environment

To edit environment variables, create a file with name .env and copy the contents from .env.example to start with.

Var Name	Type	Default	Description
NODE_ENV	string	development	API runtime environment. eg: staging
PORT	number	3000	Port to run the API server on
MONGO_URL	string	mongodb://localhost:27017/books	URL for MongoDB
SECRET_HEX	string	827d263847500d926a520b...	HEX string to secure JWT
ACCESS_TOKEN_LIFETIME_MIN	number	60	Access token TTL in mins
BCRYPT_N_ROUNDS	number	12	Number of round to generate Bcrypt salt
WHITELIST_ORIGINS	string[]	["http://localhost"]	White list origins
SMTP_USER	string	project	SMTP user name
SMTP_PASS	string	secret	SMTP password
SMTP_PORT	number	1025	SMTP port
SMTP_HOST	string	localhost	SMTP localhost
SMTP_FROM_EMAIL	string	no-reply@example.com	SMTP from email

Logging

The application uses winston as the default logger. The configuration file is at src/logger.ts.

• All logs are saved in ./logs directory and at /logs in the docker container.
• The docker-compose file has a volume attached to container to expose host directory to the container for writing logs.
• Console messages are prettified
• Each line in error log file is a stringified JSON.

Directory Structure

├── .vscode
│   └── settings.json
├── scripts
│   └── dev.sh
├── src
│   ├── config
│   │   └── config.ts
│   ├── db
│   │   └── mongo
│   │       └── connection.ts
│   ├── errors
│   │   └── index.ts
│   ├── middleware
│   │   └── handle-error-middleware.ts
│   ├── models
│   │   └── Book.ts
│   ├── public
│   │   └── index.html
│   ├── services
│   │   ├── jwt.ts
│   │   └── password.ts
│   ├── v1
│   │   ├── controllers
│   │   │   └── book
│   │   │       ├── add.ts
│   │   │       ├── all.ts
│   │   │       ├── index.ts
│   │   │       └── search.ts
│   │   ├── index.ts
│   │   └── openapi.json
│   ├── app.ts
│   ├── logger.ts
│   ├── routes.ts
│   └── server.ts
├── tests
│   ├── errors
│   │   └── ApplicationError.test.ts
│   ├── middleware
│   │   └── handle-error-middleware.test.ts
│   ├── models
│   │   └── Book.test.ts
│   └── app.test.ts
├── .env
├── .env.example
├── .eslintrc.js
├── .gitignore
├── .prettierrc.js
├── .travis.yml
├── Dockerfile
├── README.md
├── docker-compose.dev.yml
├── docker-compose.yml
├── jest.config.js
├── nodemon.json
├── package-lock.json
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json