Express-TS-Starter

A minimal express server starter with TypeScript

Pre-Requisites

1. Make sure you have node.js installed locally
2. Once you have node.js installed, add yarn to your global local directories with this command in terminal:

npm i -g yarn

Getting Started

1. After you cloned this repo down to your local machine, start with installing dependencies by:

yarn install

2. To start developing locally, use the command below:

yarn start:dev

Useful Commands

• yarn build creates a production build of the server code in the build folder, which is ignored by git, in the project root.

• yarn start runs the production build in build folder, will error out if the build folder doesn't exist.

• yarn start:dev runs the development server and will live reload the server on ts file saves.

• yarn clean removes yarn caches and output folders, then re-installs node_modules.

• yarn clean:dev does the job of yarn clean but starts development server immediately after.

• yarn test runs a jest unit test.

• yarn test:watch runs jest in watch mode.

• yarn test:ci runs jest in CI mode, most likely gets called in the CI scripts.

• yarn test:coverage runs jest and has it return coverage report, then opens the generated coverage report html on the browser.

• yarn tslint runs the linter on all typescript code.

• yarn lint-staged runs the linter on all staged files in git, this command is most likely called by husky before creating a git commit.

• yarn semantic-release runs the semantic-release package to bump package.json version and create git release tag. This is most likely called by Travis CI, but can be ran locally to do a dry-run without actually publishing a release.

Packages

Explanations for why they exist in this project. (Ignoring @types/* since they are just type definitions for the corresponding library)

Dependencies

• body-parser: express middleware that parses req.body into a trustable JSON before getting to the controllers.
• compression: express middleware that compresses response bodies for all requests.
• cors: express middleware that adds CORS control on requests and responses, allowing developers to restrict origins, types, and etc. of all the calls coming in and out.
• dotenv: a library that puts all config variables defined in .env file into process.env.
• express: popular node.js server framework.
• moment: popular date time utility library.
• morgan: express middleware that logs the status for all requests.
• winston: popular logging library that is highly customizable.

Dev Dependencies

• @semantic-release/commit-analyzer: semantic-release plugin that analyzes commit messages to determine if a version bump is required.
• @semantic-release/git: semantic-release plugin that pushes git version tags and files that are generated for release to git remote.
• @semantic-release/npm: semantic-release plugin that updates the package.json version and publish package to npm (optional, so disabled for this starter).
• @semantic-release/release-notes-generator: semantic-release plugin that generates release notes based on commit messages.
• conventional-changelog-express: a library that multiple semantic-release plugins rely on.
• husky: git hooks configuration to call scripts before commit, push, and more.
• jest: popular testing framework.
• lint-staged: run linter to format staged files in git, used with husky to lint staged files before a commit.
• nodemon: listens to file saves and live reloads server during development.
• prettier: code formatter that makes code more readable.
• semantic-release: automatic release version management, the documentation for the workflow of the setup for this starter is available here.
• ts-jest: TypeScript preprocessor for Jest.
• ts-node: node.js that works with TypeScript so that no need to do tsc on every file save during development.
• tslint: TypeScript linter.
• tslint-config-prettier: TSLint plugin that works with Prettier to remove conflicts.
• typescript: A JavaScript that enforces typing.

Other Recommended Libraries

These libraries are not in this repo but they are some go-tos for certain functionalities.

• apollo server: popular GraphQL server framework.
• artillery: load testing framework that allows developers to customize load test scenarios.
• async: JavaScript promise utils library.
• axios: http client for both browser and node.js.
• jsonwebtoken: library that creates/verifies jwts.
• knex: SQL query builder.
• lodash: popular object/array/etc. utility library.
• mongoose: mongoDB node.js library.
• nodemailer: email cilent for node.js.
• node-postgres: PostGres client for node.js.
• node_redis: node.js client for Redis, which helps cache content to boost response time.
• passport: authentication middleware that supports 300+ kinds of log in methods, including traditional username/password, Facebook, Google, OAuth, SAML, etc.
• rabbitMQ: message broker which queues heavy duties, such as sending email and generating PDFs.