nemb

Node + Express + Mongoose boilerplate

This projects contains everything you need to jump start your backend.

Usage:

To run nemb, just clone or download this repository, cd into it, execute npm install or yarn install and run project with npm start/yarn start or npm run start-nomongo/yarn run start-nomongo if you have MongoDB already running on default port.

nemb comes with a couple of ready scripts to make your workflow easier:

start: Restarts or runs MongoDB in background with database path set to db folder in this project, then runs server.js and reloads on change.
start-nomongo: Only runs server.js and reloads on change in source. Useful if you already have MongoDB running.
start-nowatch: Restarts or runs MongoDB and runs server.js, but doesn't watch for changes.

Libraries:

body-parser: Used to parse www-urlencoded format (data from html forms for example) and JSON.
cors: Self-explanatory.
express: Web framework.
mongoose: MongoDB object modeling. Makes using MongoDB much easier.
winston: Used for logging things.
nodemon: Runs project and restarts when changes are made.

Project structure

|____.gitignore
|____build
|____db
|____logs
|____src
| |____components
| | |____example
| | | |____example.js
| | | |____example.routes.js
| |____models
| | |____example.js
| |____modules
| | |____db.js
| | |____logger.js
| |____server.js
|____package.json
|____README.md

Project structure is meant to be scalable. Here are the rules you should obey while using this structure:

component has it's routes and revolves around one thing. If you realise at some point that your component doesn't need any exclusive routes, then convert it to a module.
module (as the name suggests) should be designed as reusable. It does not interact with anything outside directly and must not depend on a component.
If there's an operation directly bound to a model, put it in the same file and bind it to that model. You can read how in Mongoose docs about Schema methods and statics.
Make use of Mongoose middleware. An example could be writing a Schema.pre('save', function (next) { ... }); and hashing user's password directly before saving.

To do:

document boilerplate thoroughly
create a start command which starts everything
optional command to run without mongo (in case someone has it running already)
move to TypeScript

xkrsz / nemb