We're running the starter at:
https://graphile-starter.herokuapp.com
Feel free to register an account and have a poke around as you see fit.
NOTE: emails are sent from Graphile Starter, so please only enter email addresses you control.
NOTE: every time we merge to master, we ship a new version of Graphile Starter to Heroku and entirely wipe the database, so your data may not persist. If you wish to delete your data before this time you can do so via the delete account feature baked into the starter.
Graphile Starter is an opinionated quick-start project for full-stack application development in React, Node.js, GraphQL and PostgreSQL. It includes the foundations of a modern web application, with a full user registration system, organizations (e.g. teams/companies/etc), session management, optimized job queue, a significant amount of pre-configured tooling, tests (both end-to-end and more granular) and much more.
It is suitable for building projects both large and small, with a focus on productivity. You might use it:
- to go from conception to launch of a web app during a hack day
- as the foundation for client projects at your web agency
- to build your side-hustle without spending lots of time on boilerplate
- to build a SaaS project to help fund your open source work 😉
However you use it, the project can be deployed to many platforms, and can be scaled to larger audiences both horizontally and vertically with very few changes.
Not intended for beginners: this project combines a lot of technologies together to produce a highly productive development environment, and includes a pre-built database schema for an advanced account system. If you're not already familiar with a lot of these technologies, or haven't built a database-driven project before, you may find that there's too many things to get your head around at once. For beginners, we recommend you start with the PostGraphile schema design tutorial.
Please note that this software is not "complete," free of software defects, or free of security issues — it is not a "finished" solution, but rather the seed of a solution which you should review, customize, fix, and develop further.
It is intended that you use a "point in time" version of this software ─ it is not intended that you can merge updates to this software into your own derivative in an automated fashion.
PLEASE DONATE.
Take this software and use it as the starting point to build your project. Go make some money, and give something back to support us building more tools and kits for the Node, GraphQL and PostgreSQL ecosystems. We have made this project available under the simple and liberal MIT license to give you to a huge amount of freedom in how you use it, but this isn't possible without the help of our wonderful sponsors.
We need more people to join our sponsors so we can continue to bring about awesome projects like this. We'd love to spend more time on open source, building tools that will save you and others even more time and money ─ please sponsor our open source efforts:
And please give some love to our featured sponsors 🤩:
Chad Furman |
Storyscript |
- Features
- Variants
- Prerequisites
- Getting Started
- Running
- Making it yours
- Docker development
- Production build
- Deploying to Heroku
- License
Graphile Starter is a full-stack GraphQL and React project, with server-side rendering (SSR) and routing thanks to Next.js. The backend is a beautiful pairing of Node.js and PostgreSQL running on Express.js, enabled by PostGraphile in library mode. The frontend uses the AntD design framework to accelerate development. The entire stack is written in TypeScript, with auto-generated GraphQL types and operations thanks to graphql-code-generator.
There are four tenets to Graphile Starter:
- Speedy development
- Batteries included
- Type safety
- Best practices
Graphile Starter is easy to start and everything is pre-configured as much as possible.
Speedy development: hot reloading, easy debugging, Graphile's idempotent migration system, job queue and server middleware ready to use; not to mention deep integration with VSCode should you use that editor: plugin recommendations, pre-configured settings, ESLint and Prettier integration and debugging profiles
Batteries included: full user system and OAuth, AntD design framework, Jest and Cypress end-to-end testing, security, email templating and transport, pre-configured linting and code formatting, deployment instructions, and more
Type safety: pre-configured type checking, strongly typed throughout with TypeScript
Best practices: React, GraphQL, PostGraphile, Node, Jest and Cypress best practices
See TECHNICAL_DECISIONS.md for a more detailed list of features included and the technical decisions behind them.
Since this is a highly opinionated starter; community members may have slightly different opinions and may choose to maintain forks of this project that apply their own opinions. A few of these are listed below; if you maintain a fork of this project please make a note at the top of your own README, and add it to this list:
- Nuxt.js variant - replaces Next.js for Vue users
- Create React App variant - replaces Next.js for apps without Server Side Rendering
You can either work with this project locally (directly on your machine) or use a pre-configured Docker environment. We'll differentiate this in the README with a table like this one:
Local mode | OR | Docker mode |
---|---|---|
command for local development | or | command for docker-compose development |
Be careful not to mix and match Docker-mode vs local-mode for development.
You should make a choice and stick to it. (Developing locally but deploying with
production.Docker
is absolutely fine.)
IMPORTANT: If you choose the Docker mode, be sure to read docker/README.md.
For users of Visual Studio Code (VSCode), a .vscode
folder is included with
editor settings and debugger settings provided, plus a list of recommended
extensions. Should you need it, there is also a .devcontainer
folder which
enables you to use
VSCode's remote containers
giving you a local-like development experience whilst still using docker
containers.
Requires:
- Node.js v10+ must be installed (v12 recommended)
- PostgreSQL v10+ server must be available
pg_dump
command must be available (or you can remove this functionality)- VSCode is recommended, but any editor will do
This software has been developed under Mac and Linux, and should work in a
bash
environment.
Windows users: making a project like Graphile Starter run smoothly on
Windows can be a challenge; @JoeSchr
and @hips
on the
Graphile Discord have been working in improving
this and they're pretty pleased with the result, but you may still get some
teething problems. PRs to fix Windows compatibility issues are welcome (please
keep them small!) Failing that, try the Docker mode :)
Requires:
docker
docker-compose
- Ensure you've allocated Docker at least 4GB of RAM; significantly more
recommended
- (Development only, production is much more efficient)
Has been tested on Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 18.04LTS).
This project is designed to work with yarn
. If you don't have yarn
installed, you can install it with npm install -g yarn
. The Docker setup
already has yarn
& npm
installed and configured.
To get started, please run:
Local mode | OR | Docker mode |
---|---|---|
yarn setup |
or | export UID; yarn docker setup |
This command will lead you through the necessary steps, and create a .env
file
for you containing your secrets.
NOTE: export UID
is really important on Linux Docker hosts, otherwise the
files and folders created by Docker will end up owned by root, which is
non-optimal. We recommend adding export UID
to your ~/.profile
or
~/.bashrc
or similar so you don't have to remember it.
Do not commit .env
to version control!
You can bring up the stack with:
Local mode | OR | Docker mode |
---|---|---|
yarn start |
or | export UID; yarn docker start |
After a short period you should be able to load the application at http://localhost:5678
This main command runs a number of tasks:
- uses
graphile-migrate
to watch themigrations/current.sql
file for changes, and automatically runs it against your database when it changes - watches the TypeScript source code of the server, and compiles it from
@app/*/src
to@app/*/dist
so node/graphile-worker
/etc. can run the compiled code directly - runs the node server (includes PostGraphile and Next.js middleware)
- runs
graphile-worker
to execute your tasks (e.g. sending emails) - watches your GraphQL files and your PostGraphile schema for changes and generates your TypeScript React hooks for you automatically, leading to strongly typed code with minimal effort
- runs the
jest
tests in watch mode, automatically re-running as the database or test files change
NOTE: docker-compose up server
also runs the PostgreSQL server that the
system connects to.
You may also choose to develop locally, but use the PostgreSQL server via
docker-compose up -d db
.
Then for development you may need a console; you can open one with:
Local mode | OR | Docker mode |
---|---|---|
bash |
or | export UID; yarn docker bash |
To shut everything down:
Local mode | OR | Docker mode |
---|---|---|
Ctrl-c | or | export UID; yarn docker down |
- Download and extract a zip of the latest release from GitHub
- In that folder run:
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Graphile Starter base"
- Change the project name in
package.json
- Change the project settings in
@app/config/src/index.ts
- Replace the
README.md
file - Add your own copyright notices to the
LICENSE.md
file - Commit as you usually would
- Show your appreciation with sponsorship
Be sure to read docker/README.md.
To build the production image, use docker build
as shown below. You should
supply the ROOT_URL
build variable (which will be baked into the client code,
so cannot be changed as envvars); if you don't then the defaults will apply
(which likely will not be suitable).
To build the worker, pass TARGET="worker"
instead of the default
TARGET="server"
.
docker build \
--file production.Dockerfile \
--build-arg ROOT_URL="http://localhost:5678" \
--build-arg TARGET="server" \
.
When you run the image you must pass it the relevant environmental variables, for example:
docker run --rm -it --init -p 5678:5678 \
-e GRAPHILE_LICENSE="$GRAPHILE_LICENSE" \
-e SECRET="$SECRET" \
-e JWT_SECRET="$JWT_SECRET" \
-e DATABASE_VISITOR="$DATABASE_VISITOR" \
-e DATABASE_URL="$DATABASE_URL" \
-e AUTH_DATABASE_URL="$AUTH_DATABASE_URL" \
-e GITHUB_KEY="$GITHUB_KEY" \
-e GITHUB_SECRET="$GITHUB_SECRET" \
docker-image-id-here
Currently if you miss required envvars weird things will happen; we don't currently have environment validation (PRs welcome!).
Use yarn run build
to generate a production build of the project
If you are using graphile-migrate
make sure that you have executed
graphile-migrate commit
to commit all your database changes, since we only run
committed migrations in production.
Make sure you have customized @app/config/src/index.ts
.
Make sure everything is committed and pushed in git.
Set up a database server; we recommend using Amazon RDS.
Once your database server is running, you can use our heroku-setup
script to
automate the setup process. This script does the following:
- Creates the Heroku app
- Adds the redis extension to this Heroku app
- Creates the database in the database server
- Creates the relevant roles, generating random passwords for them
- Installs some common database extensions
- Sets the Heroku config variables
- Adds the Heroku app as a git remote named 'Heroku'
- Pushes the 'master' branch to Heroku to perform your initial build
Copy heroku-setup.template
to heroku-setup
, then edit it and customize the
settings at the top. We also recommend reading through the script and
customizing it as you see fit - particularly if you are using additional
extensions that need installing.
Now run the script:
bash heroku-setup
Hopefully all has gone well. If not, step through the remaining tasks in the Heroku-setup script and fix each task as you go. We've designed the script so that if your superuser credentials are wrong, or the Heroku app already exists, you can just edit the settings and try again. All other errors will probably need manual intervention. Verbosity is high so you can track exactly what happened.
The server should be up and running now (be sure to access it over HTTPS
otherwise you will not be able to run GraphQL queries), but it is not yet
capable of sending emails. To achieve this, you must configure an email
transport. We have pre-configured support for Amazon SES. Once SES is set up,
your domain is verified, and you've verified any emails you wish to send email
to (or have had your sending limits removed), make sure that the fromEmail
in
@app/config/src/index.ts
is correct, and then create an IAM role for your
PostGraphile server. Here's an IAM template for sending emails - this is the
only permission required for our IAM role currently, but you may wish to add
others later.
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "ses:SendRawEmail",
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}
Generate an Access Key for this IAM role, and then tell Heroku the access key id and secret:
heroku config:set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="..." AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="..." -a $APP_NAME
Now you can tell Heroku to run the worker process as well as the currently running 'web' process:
heroku ps:scale worker=1 -a $APP_NAME
When you register an account on the server you should receive a verification email containing a clickable link. When you click the link your email will be verified and thanks to GraphQL subscriptions the previous tab should be updated to reflect that your account is now verified.
You can also configure your application for social login. This works the same as
in development except the callback URL will be different, something like
https://MY_HEROKU_APP_NAME.herokuapp.com/auth/github/callback
. Set the GitHub
OAuth secrets on your Heroku app to trigger a restart and enable social login:
heroku config:set GITHUB_KEY="..." GITHUB_SECRET="..." -a $APP_NAME
To delete the Heroku app:
heroku apps:destroy -a $APP_NAME
To delete the database/roles (replace dbname
with your database name):
drop database dbname;
drop role dbname_visitor;
drop role dbname_authenticator;
drop role dbname;
This is open source software; you may use, modify and distribute it under the terms of the MIT License, see GRAPHILE_STARTER_LICENSE.md.