nodeStarterApp

is a minimal NodeJS app which will serve as a quick-start (template) for my next NodeJS projects. It includes a logging framework (bunyan) and express for requests routing and middlewares. There are some essential middlewares for web APIs already setup, like express, body-parser and CORS.

Purpose

The goal of this project is to build a minimal NodeJS application using best practises and available (free & frequently used) packages that meets the most often needed requirements.

Requirements

Best practises requirements, we want:

• open source,

  • the choosen modules/tools/solutions need to be free (as in no costs) and have support of an active community.

• HTML5, css3,

  • the app serves as a webserver with a near-empty HTML-5 page, based on the HTML5 Boilerplate (https://html5boilerplate.com/) v7.3.0

• logging,

  • with "context" like module/function, date/time stamp, log levels (debug info,warn, error as minimum)
  • support of configurable output (flat file, roling file, syslog, ..)
  • for now we will implement/use a rolling file output (so automatic cleanup of log files)
  • logging output suitable for filtering (and/or script processing for finding issues)

• REST Webserivice API,

  • we want to implement an API, so our webserver can give a response on a (web) request
  • we will return our response in JSON format

• use build tools

  • unit testing (mocha, should, sinon)
  • integration testing (supertest)
  • for automatic node restarts when source files are changes
  • compress/uglify source files to distribution folder

• security

• https

  • mechanism to start the app after boot (we will use PM2)
  • targets Unix/Linux (will be tested on Ubuntu and Raspbian PI )

Not all of it will be implemented in the code; some aspects might need (free) third party tools and/or configuration settings.

Packages	Requirement	install
gulp	Build-Tool, install it so it can run from command line
	It can copy and uglify/compress source files	sudo npm install gulp -g
gulp-nodemon	Build-Tool, detect source file changes	npm install gulp-nodemon --save-dev
bunyan	Logging	npm install bunyan --save
express	REST API	npm install express --save
body-parser	make json objects available in req.body	npm install body-parser --save
mocha	unit testing framework. gulp-mocha is the gulp plugin of mocha, should = assertion framework, sinon = mocking framework	npm install gulp-mocha should sinon --save-dev
supertest	intergration tests with supertest	npm install supertest gulp-env --save-dev

Installation notes

1. fork this package to your github account

2. clone it from github to your server

git clone https://github.com/[your-account-name-here]/nodeStarterApp.git

3. install node and npm when needed. ( find here how to install node)

   test first if you have node and npm already installed. Let it show its version number

node --version
npm --version

4. install its dependencies

npm install

NOTE: Use npm install --only=production to install only dependencies, and not devDependencies,regardless of the value of the NODE_ENV environment variable.

5. run the program

gulp

or

node nodeStarterApp.js

or use PM2 (auto start / auto restart)

pm2 start nodeStarterApp.js

6. open a web browser and test with:

http://[your ip or domainname]:8088

7. execute the unit- and integration tests (note you need to install gulp, see above in the table)

gulp test

8. show log output from the logfile (note you need to install bunyan, see above in the table)

cd logs
bunyan logTest.log 

Contribute

Report a bug or a suggestion by posting an issue on the git repository (https://github.com/Vinz68/nodeStarterApp/issues).

TODO List:

• include code quality check (JSLint or something else..)
• add client authentication using OAUTH2
• use https