Node Express Rest Api Template

The stack

1. TypeScript
2. node - runtime
3. express - Framework
4. prisma - ORM
5. postgres - DB

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The infra (AWS)

1. Pulumi - The infra framework
2. RDS (Postgres) - DB
3. ECR - To store your docker images
4. ECS Task - To run your Rest API container
5. Load Balancer - To expose your Rest API to the world

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Configuration

In order to run the server, you must create a .env file It is not in the repo.

create one by running:

echo "NODE_ENV=development
IS_CLOUD=false
PORT=3001
JWT_PRIVATE_KEY=<RSA PRIVATE KEY>
JWT_PUBLIC_KEY=<RSA PUBLIC KEY>
JWT_TOKEN_EXPIRY=1h
JWT_REFRESH_TOKEN_EXPIRY=7d
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://template_db_user:Aa123456@localhost:5432/template_db?schema=public" > .env

Notice that in the file above requires a RSA public and private keys:

$ openssl genrsa -out private.pem 2048
$ openssl rsa -in private.pem -pubout -out public.pem

LINUX:

# copies the key as 1 line to your clipboard,
# paste this one instead of <RSA PRIVATE KEY>
$ awk -v ORS='\\n' '1' private.pem | pbcopy

# paste this one instead of <RSA PUBLIC KEY>
$ awk -v ORS='\\n' '1' public.pem | pbcopy

Windows: 😢

# copies the key as 1 line to your clipboard,
# paste this one instead of <RSA PRIVATE KEY>
$ cat private.pem | tr -d '\n' | clip

# paste this one instead of <RSA PUBLIC KEY>
$ cat public.pem | tr -d '\n' | clip

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Getting started

(RECOMMENDED) With docker-compose (creates postgres & pgadmin for you):

$ nvm use # This will use the node version from .nvmrc
$ npm install
$ npx prisma generate
# --build is necessary on the first time or after the Dockerfile was changed
$ docker-compose up --build

After the server is up, you can attach and debug with VSCode by pressing "Attach Docker Debugger"

Without docker-compose:
Notice that without docker-compose you will need to have your own postgres

$ nvm use # This will use the node version from .nvmrc
$ npm install
$ npx prisma generate
# Don't forget to bring your own postgres and set it in the .env file
$ npm run start:dev:migrate # Or run "Debug Locally" in VSCode

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Other useful commands

# Runs pending migrations them starts the server in dev mode with nodemon
$ npm run start:dev:migrate

# Generates a new migration after updating prisma schema
$ npm run migrations:generate <migration-name>

# Generates prisma client again after updating prisma schema
$ npx prisma generate

# SSH into a docker container (without docker-compose)
$ docker ps
# Copy you CONTAINER ID from the output of this command
$ docker exec -it <container id hash> sh

# Alternatively you can just (api is the name in our docker-compose file)
$ docker-compose run api sh

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Still missing:

• Style guide explaining the different layers and features of the template

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Possible additions to the template (Please PR):

Code:

• Swagger documentation using jsdoc comments use this article for reference
• Validation of request DTOs using class-transformer & class-validator
• Redis integration as cache
• A separate process for running tasks using BullMQ with integrated UI (this depends on redis)

Infra:

• Change the infra to Terraform
• Support separate pipelines github actions for "Release" & "Deploy"

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Infrastructure and Deployment

Read more

Need help?

Contact Doron Feldman At [email protected]