Skip to content

akoufa/nodejs-app-architecture

Repository files navigation

What is this repository for?

Node.js app architecture showcase in Typescript. You can start your Node.js projects building on this boilerplate.

For the old js version look at the branch javascript

Architecture Overview

The app is designed to use a layered architecture. The architecture is heavily influenced by the Clean Architecture. The code style being used is based on the airbnb js style guide

Data Layer

The data layer is implemented using repositories, that hide the underlying data sources (database, network, cache, etc), and provides an abstraction over them so other parts of the application that make use of the repositories, don't care about the origin of the data and are decoupled from the specific implementations used, like Mongoose ORM (MongoDb) that is used by this app. Furthermore, the repositories are responsible to map the entities they fetch from the data sources to the models used in the applications. This is important to enable the decoupling.

Domain Layer

The domain layer is implemented using services. They depend on the repository interfaces to get the app models and apply the business rules on them. They are not coupled to a specific database implementation and can be reused if we add more data sources to the app or even if we change the database for example from Postgres to MongoDB.

Routes/Controller Layer

This layer is being used in the express app and depends on the domain layer (services). Here we define the routes that can be called from outside. The services are always used as the last middleware on the routes and we must not rely on res.locals from express to get data from previous middlewares. That means that the middlewares registered before should not alter data being passed to the domain layer. They are only allowed to act upon the data without modification, like for example validating the data and skipping calling next().

Entry point

The entry point for the applications is the server.ts file. It does not depend on express.js or other node.js frameworks. It is responsible for instantiating the application layers, connecting to the db, mounting the http server to the specified port and handling the signals for graceful shutdown.

Quick start

Use Docker:

You can use Docker to start the app locally. The Dockerfile and the docker-compose.yaml are already provided for you.

Run the following command:

  • docker-compose up

Use the npm scripts:

Setup development environment with docker:

  • npm run start:dev.env to start the development environment (mongo database).

Run the service

  • npm run dev for starting the service using ts-node-dev to auto restart the server on changes.

Build app

  • npm run build to build the project.
  • npm start to start the server.

Packages and Tools

License

Copyright 2020 Alexandros Koufatzis.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.