/express-api-template

Primary LanguageTypeScript

This is a template for my backend projects

Running this on your machine

This branch is for SQL database ( here , i used postgres) without ORM

Using npm

To use this template, first, you have to create a .env file and add the environment variables. Here's the example .env file.

PORT=8000
NODE_ENV=development
DB_USER=naim
DB_PASSWORD=naim
DB_CONNECTION_STRING=localhost:1521/ORCLCDB.localdomain

Then run this command in your terminal or cmd, npm start to start the app. Or you can run npm run dev to start the app in development mode. Every time you save any file, the server will restart.

Adding Project Name

Replace express-template with your project name in package.json file & bin/www file .

Using Docker-compose

At first, you have to create a .env file as explained here
Then,
To run this template using docker-compose. Just run this command.

docker-compose up

To know more about docker, see [this] (https://github.com/nayeem-17/DevOps-writeups/blob/master/Docker/README.md)

The architecture of this template

  • authentication
  • controllers
  • routes
  • services
  • models

Authentication : Here I used json-web-token to authenticate the user. User logs in using their credentials and a json-web-token are returned. Then the user has to add that that token in headers for every request.

Controllers: Here, all of the controller files will be stored.

Routes: Here, the router files will be stored. In a router file, a single express router will be declared. Then the express app will use the router in app.js file.

Services: Here, various service file is stored. The cache.js is for handling caching. The rateLimiter.js is for limiting a request rate for a user. Other services, such as sending email, logging data can be stored here.

  • Sending email : To send email just call sendMail = (RECEIVER_EMAIL, subject, body, links) function. This function use nodemailer to send the function. You can use your gmail account to send an email. First, you have to enable Less secure app access of your google account from settings. Then you've to add your account credentials in .env file. 
    EMAIL_ID=YOUR_GMAIL_ACCOUNT
EMAIL_PASS=PASSWORD
    if You have a custom domain, then just change the mailconfig in this file. Now you are good to go.

Models: Here, all the database models will be stored.

Documentation

swagger is a great tool for creating documentation for your api. You can either write swagger config file in YAML or JSON. Then swagger-ui-express will generate a beautiful user interface for your api. I've deployed this template on Heroku. You will find the UI of this api documentation here. This UI if for this swagger.yaml config file.

Here, I wrote a demo config file in YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language). To load this file.

const swaggerUi = require('swagger-ui-express');
const YAML = require('yamljs');
const swaggerDocument = YAML.load('./swagger.yaml');

Then server the swaggerDocument in a route.

app.use('/api-docs', swaggerUi.serve, swaggerUi.setup(swaggerDocument))

Now you can find your documentation UI in,

http://localhost:{PORT}/api-docs if you're running your server at localhost.
https://your_server/api-docs, if you've deployed else-where.

Useful links: