Express Starter

A REST API built using Node.js, Express.js, In-memory MongoDB and Mongoose.

Table of Contents

• Express Starter
  • Table of Contents
  • Requirements
• Dependencies
• Install and run app
• Test app
• App Structure

Requirements

• Node.js v12.14.0 or higher
• yarn

  • You can also use npm, but the app was built using yarn and that is what the documentation will reflect.

Dependencies

• Express.js
• In-memory database using mongodb-memory-server

  • This database does not persist.

  • It's just there to get up and running quickly and for testig

• Interface with database with Mongoose
• Password hashing with bcrypt.js // Not yet impemented
• Cross Origin Request using cors
• Reading environment variables using dotenv
• Testing with Jest
• Dev server using nodemon

Install and run app

IMPORTANT: The MongoDB binaries will be downloaded to the node_modules directory the first time the server is ran. This may cause a delay in seeing a response from the database. This is done from the dev dependency mongodb-memory-server that uses an in-memory database.

git clone https://github.com/ButlerFuqua/express_starter.git
cd express_starter
yarn
yarn dev

That's it!

The app should be listening at http://localhost:8080. Alternatively you can create a .env file in the root and assign a different port with the PORT variable.

NOTE: An environment variable named PORT will override the default port of 8080

Run yarn start instead of yarn dev in a production environment. yarn dev listens for changes using nodemon.

Test app

Simply run yarn test from the root of the application to run the scripted tests.

The testing files can be found in the tests directory. Jest automatically runs all files with the .test.js extension.

App Structure

• src
  • api
    • handle routes and middleware
  • database
    • connect to and seed database
  • models
    • model schema and database logic layer
  • services
    • business logic layer
  • validation
    • handle validation
  • app.js - entry point of app
• tests
  • contains jest tests
• jest-mongo-config - configuration for temp mongoDB used for testing
• jest-config - configuration file for testing
• package.json - app info, list of dependencies and scripts
• README.md - overview of app