tsauvajon/backathon

Node.js backend boilerplate for hackatons

This repo is functionality complete — PRs and issues welcome!

Getting started

To get the Node server running locally:

• Clone this repo
• npm install to install all required dependencies
• npm run prettier to have a beautiful codebase
• npm run test to launch ITs
• docker-compose up to launch docker stack
• Install MongoDB Community Edition (instructions) and run it by executing mongod
• cp .env.example .env to have access to environement variables (dont forget to change them)
• npm run start or yarn start to start the local server
• npm run build or yarn build to build the server

Workflow

• git checkout master
• git fetch
• git pull
• git branch -b '(feat|fix|refacto)/branch_name pull out a branch from master (up to date)
• dev your stuff
• git add .
• git commit -m 'Your commit'
• git push origin (feat|fix|refacto)/branch_name
• create a pull request to run checks (conflicts, CI)
• ask for a review
• squash and merge
• check master tests

Code Overview

Dependencies

• expressjs - The server for handling and routing HTTP requests
• express-jwt - Middleware for validating JWTs for authentication
• jsonwebtoken - For generating JWTs used by authentication
• mongoose - For modeling and mapping MongoDB data to javascript
• mongoose-unique-validator - For handling unique validation errors in Mongoose. Mongoose only handles validation at the document level, so a unique index across a collection will throw an exception at the driver level. The mongoose-unique-validator plugin helps us by formatting the error like a normal mongoose ValidationError.
• passport - For handling user authentication

Application Structure

• server.ts - The entry point to our application. This file defines our express server and connects it to MongoDB using mongoose. It also requires the routes and models we'll be using in the application.
• .env - This folder contains configuration/environment variables (Dont forget to set it up)
• routes/ - This folder contains the route definitions for our classic API.
• graphql/ - This folder contains the graphql types, queries, mutations ...
• models/ - This folder contains the schema definitions for our Mongoose models.

Authentication !

Requests are authenticated using the Authorization header with a valid JWT. We define two express middlewares in routes/auth.js that can be used to authenticate requests. The required middleware configures the express-jwt middleware using our application's secret and will return a 401 status code if the request cannot be authenticated. The payload of the JWT can then be accessed from req.payload in the endpoint. The optional middleware configures the express-jwt in the same way as required, but will not return a 401 status code if the request cannot be authenticated.