QuackAcademy Express Template

This is a turn-key ExpressJS repo, set up with KnexJS/PostgreSQL, users/authentication routers and error middleware.

You can use this to quickly launch an Express backend or to follow along with the deployment tutorials on QuackAcademy listed below.

Deployment Tutorial Links

Clone/fork/download the app, then install the dependencies by running:

npm i

We'll be using nodemon to run the server locally- it restarts automatically on changes to files.

npm run server

The included file zRunServer.sh will open a new terminal and run this command on double click.

These variables need to be defined in order for the program to function successfully.

If working locally, create a file called .env in the root folder.

You'll store variables like so:

Environment variables are secret and should never be pushed to github.

Ensure that *.env is listed in your .gitignore file to prevent this.

These environment variables need updating for the project to function:

process.end.DB_ENV- this needs to be set to "development" without quotes. Tells knex to create a local database.
process.env.JWT_SECRET- this is the secret that your tokens get encoded/decoded with.
process.env.topSecretCode- this is used as a way to have 'developer only' endpoints, like requiring it when calling error-router endpoints.

These are optional:

Webhooks: Add these if you want the webhooks included in utils.js and used in the error middleware to function. Learn more about WebHooks here.
- process.env.discordUrl
- process.env.slackUrl

To create a local sqlite3 database, install knex:

npm install -g knex

And then run:

knex migrate:latest

You can also use npx to run the command without installing knex:

npx knex migrate:latest

Now fill the database with seed data:

knex seed:run

Tests can be found and updated in the /tests folder.

Run the tests with the command below:

npm run test

Hopefully they all pass!

Let's call some endpoints with Insomnia (Or Postman) to make sure everything is working correctly.

If you're unfamiliar with these tools, check out our article here.

The server should be running on port 8018.

This will return a JWT we will use to authenticate the next call.

Call get http://localhost:8018/api/users/user/all and you should receive a response with the three seeded users.

Add your token from logging in to your headers as shown below:

If you were able to get this far everything is setup correctly and functioning as expected.

Happy hacking!