azobu0/template-api

⭕ Template API • Quick starter kit project using Node.js and Express

⭕ Template API

Template API is a quick starter kit project to build a complete API using Node.js and Express.

The complete list of all features are located at azobu-projects/template or live on template.azobu.com.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Repositories
• Tech Stack
• Application Structure
• Getting Started
  • Installation
  • Setup Environment Variables
  • Run
  • Lint
  • Test
  • Deployment

Repositories

You should clone all of the required repositories:

• template
• template-web
• template-api

Tech Stack

All the backend/API dependencies sorted by priority:

• Git — Distributed version control system
  • GitHub — Provides hosting for software development and version control using Git
• JavaScript — The primary programming language
  • Node.js — JavaScript runtime environment and package manager
  • npm, Yarn — JavaScript runtime environment and package manager
• REST API — REpresentational State Transfer, architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems
• Nodemon — Tool to automatically restart Node application when file changes
• PM2 — Process manager for Node.js
  • PM2.IO — (PM2+ Monit) Monitor PM2 instances
• Express — Minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework
• MongoDB — Cross-platform document-oriented database program
  • Mongoose — Schema-based Object-Data Modeling (ODM) for MongoDB
• PostgreSQL — Relational database management system with SQL
  • Sequelize — Promise-based Node.js Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) for SQL-related databases
• dotenv-flow — Loader for multiple environment variable files
• morgan — HTTP request logger middleware for Node.js
• multer — Express middleware for handling multipart/form-data
• cors — Express middleware that to enable CORS with various options
• bcrypt — Library to hash passwords
• crypto — JavaScript library of crypto standards
• Helmet — Secure Express app by setting various HTTP headers
• JSON Web Token (JWT) — Compact URL-safe means of representing claims
  • jsonwebtoken — JWT implementationm, symmetric and asymmetric
• HTTPie — Command-line HTTP client that will make you smile
• ESLint — Pluggable and configurable linter tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript
  • Prettier — Opinionated code formatter and extension for code editor
  • Standard — JavaScript style guide, linter, and formatter
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) — Suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally
  • Google Compute Engine (GCE) — Configurable virtual machines running in Google's data centers
  • Google Cloud Storage — RESTful online file storage web service for storing and accessing data
• Alternative of GCP:
  • Heroku — Cloud platform as a service supporting several programming languages
• Nginx — High-performance HTTP web server, load balancer, and reverse proxy
• Let's Encrypt — Free SSL/TLS Certificates to enable HTTPS
  • Certbot — Automatically enable HTTPS on your website by deploying Let's Encrypt certificates
• Circle CI — Intelligent and user-friendly Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD)
• Cloudflare — Enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service
• Uniregistry — Retail domain name registrar

Alternative future dependencies:

• Postman - The collaboration platform for API development
  • newman - CLI companion for Postman
• Alternative of REST API:
  • GraphQL API — Data query and manipulation language for APIs
    • Apollo — Data graph platform to unify APIs, microservices, and databases with GraphQL
• slug — Encode string into URL-friendly format
• Jest — Delightful JavaScript testing framework
• Sinon — Standalone test spies, stubs and mocks for JavaScript
• TypeScript — Typed JavaScript at application-scale JavaScript
• Passport — Simple, unobtrusive authentication for Node.js.
• OAuth — Open standard for access delegation
  • GitHub OAuth
  • Google OAuth
• Redis — In-memory data structure store used as a database, cache and message broker
• Alternative of Circle CI:
  • GitHub Actions — Automate, customize, and execute workflows right in GitHub
  • Travis CI — Hosted CI service used to build and test software projects
  • Jenkins — Automation server to support building, deploying and automating any project
• Docker — Virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers
  • Docker Compose — Provides a way to document and configure all of the app service dependencies

Never be dependencies:

• Other non-JavaScript family languages
• Other non-Express frameworks

For dependencies in the Web part, see template-web.

Application Structure

template-api
├── LICENSE    # License
├── README.md  # Documentation
├── app.json   # Heroku-related file
├── docs       # Documentation files to be used with HTTP CLient in VS Code
├── ecosystem.config.js  # PM2 configuration
├── jest.config.js       # Jest configuration
├── package.json         # Node.js package configuration
├── postinstall.sh       # Script to be run after dependencies installation
├── public           # Public assets
│   ├── avatars      # Default avatar images
│   ├── favicon.ico  # Favicon
│   ├── images       # Default miscellaneous images
│   └── uploads      # Uploaded files/contents from the client-side
├── src
│   ├── app.js    # Primary Express application configuration
│   ├── config    # Mostly database configuration
│   ├── index.js  # Entry point for the Node.js application
│   ├── routes    # Multiple routes configuration
│   │   └── route
│   │       ├── index.js     # Express Router configuration
│   │       ├── middlewares  # Express middlewares for specific route
│   │       ├── model.js     # Mongoose model for specific resource
│   │       └── seed.json    # Initial seed data to be used with the model
│   └── utils  # Various utility functions
└── yarn.lock  # Lock version of dependencies

There are various dotfiles related to environment variables, ESLint, Git ignore, Heroku, nvm, Prettier, and Travis CI.

Getting Started

Installation

Install dependencies using yarn:

yarn

Setup Environment Variables

For development, edit .env.development.local file:

EXPRESS_APP_API_URL=http://localhost:3000
EXPRESS_APP_WEB_URL=http://localhost:8000
EXPRESS_APP_MONGODB_URI=mongodb://localhost:27017/database_name
EXPRESS_APP_API_KEY=change_the_api_key
EXPRESS_APP_JWT_SECRET=change_the_jwt_secret

For production, edit .env.production.local file:

EXPRESS_APP_API_URL=https://api.template.azobu.com
EXPRESS_APP_WEB_URL=https://template.azobu.com
EXPRESS_APP_MONGODB_URI=mongodb://username:password@host:port/database_name
EXPRESS_APP_API_KEY=change_the_api_key
EXPRESS_APP_JWT_SECRET=change_the_jwt_secret

For deployment purpose from local machine using PM2 without CI/CD, edit .env.local file:

SERVER_USER=theusername
SERVER_HOST=100.200.300.400

Run

yarn dev

Access the API on http://localhost:3000.

Lint

yarn lint

To fix basic issues:

yarn lint --fix

Test

yarn test

Deployment

• Setup domain on Uniregistry.
• Setup DNS on Cloudflare.
• Setup server on Google Compute Engine using f1-micro (1 vCPU, 0.6 GB memory).
  • Not Google App Engine, as we need the database in it but not using DBaaS.
  • If you need more power, use g1-small (1 vCPU, 1.7 GB memory).
• (Optional) Setup storage server on Google Cloud Storage.
  • By default the upload API fallbacks to public/uploads folder.
• Setup Node.js toolchain and databse in the desired server instance.
• Run PM2 deploy scripts:
  • yarn pm2:deploy:setup
  • yarn pm2:deploy

Authors

• M Haidar Hanif (@mhaidarh)
• Azobu Team (@azobu)

License

See LICENSE