liqwik / practica

Create Node.js starter app that is production-ready, packed with ✅ best practices and built with simplicity in mind

Generate a Node.js app that is packed with best practices AND simplicity in mind. Based off our repo Node.js best practices (80,500 stars)

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A One Paragraph Overview

Although Node.js has great frameworks 💚, they were never meant to be production ready immediately. Practica.js aims to bridge the gap. Based on your preferred framework, we generate example code that demonstrates a full Microservice flow, from API to DB, that is packed with good practices. For example, we include a battle-tested error handler, sanitize API response, hardened dockerfile, thoughtful 3-tier folder structure, great testing templates with DB, and more. This saves a great deal of time and can prevent painful mistakes. All decisions made are neatly and thoughtfully documented. We strive to keep things as simple and standard as possible and base our work on the popular guide: Node.js Best Practices

1 min video 👇, ensure audio is activated

practica-1-min-explainer.mp4

Table of Contents

• Super-Quick Setup
• Our Philosophies and Unique Values
• Practices and Features
• The People Behind Practica.js
• Our best practices guide, 78,000 stars ✨
• Contribution guide
• Documentation site
• YouTube
• Coming Soon:
  • Example Applications
    • Express, PostgreSQL, with common best practices
    • Express, mongo-db, with common best practices
    • Express, PostgreSQL, with all best practices (advanced)
    • Minimal with project setup configuration only
    More Flavours

    - Fastify, PostgreSQL - Fastify, mongo-db - Generate Your Own Interactively - More coming soon

Super-Quick Setup

Run Practica.js from the Command Line

Run practica CLI and generate our default app (you can customize it using different flags):

npx @practica/create-node-app immediate --install-dependencies

✨ And you're done! That's it. The code's all been generated.

We also have a CLI interactive mode:

npx @practica/create-node-app interactive

Note that for now, it can generate an app that is based on Express and PostgreSQL only. Other options will get added soon

Start the Project

cd {your chosen folder name}
npm install

Then choose whether to start the app:

npm run

or run the tests:

npm test

Pretty straight forward, right?

You just got a Node.js Monorepo solution with one example component/Microservice and multiple libraries. Based on this hardened solution you can build a robust application. The example component/Microservice is located under: {your chosen folder name}/services/order-service. This is where you'll find the API and a good spot to start your journey from.

Next Steps

• ✅ Start coding. The code we generate is minimal by design and based on known libraries. This should help you get up to speed quickly.
• ✅ Read our 'coding with practica' guide
• ✅ Master it by reading our docs at https://practica.dev.

Our Philosophies and Unique Values

1. Best Practices on top of known Node.js frameworks

We don't re-invent the wheel. Rather, we use your favorite framework and empower it with structure and real examples. With a single command you can get an Express/Fastify-based codebase with ~100 examples of best practices inside.

2. Simplicity, how Node.js was intended

Keeping it simple, flat, and based on native Node/JS capabilities is part of this project's DNA. We believe that too many abstractions, high-complexity or fancy language features can quickly become a stumbling block for the team.

To name a few examples, our code flow is flat with almost no level of indirection, although using TypeScript - almost no features are being used besides types, for modularization we simply use Node.js modules.

3. Supports many technologies and frameworks

Good Practices and Simplicity is the name of the game with Practica. There is no need to narrow our code to a specific framework or database. We aim to support a majority of popular Node.js frameworks and databases.

Practices and Features

We apply more than 100 practices and optimizations. You can opt in or out for most of these features using option flags on our CLI. The following table lists just a few examples out of the full list of features we provide.

Feature	Explanation	Flag	Docs
Monorepo setup	Generates two components (e.g., Microservices) in a single repository with interactions between the two	--mr, --monorepo	Docs here
Output escaping and sanitizing	Clean-out outgoing responses from potential HTML security risks like XSS	--oe, --output-escape	Docs here
Integration (component) testing	Generates full-blown component/integration tests setup including DB	--t, --tests	Docs here
Unique request ID (Correlation ID)	Generates module that creates a unique correlation/request ID for every incoming request. This is available for any other object during the request life-span. Internally it uses Node's built-in AsyncLocalStorage	--coi, --correlation-id	Docs here
Dockerfile	Generates dockerfile that embodies >20 best practices	--df, --docker-file	Docs here
Strong-schema configuration	A configuration module that dynamically load run-time configuration keys and includes a strong schema so it can fail fast	Built-in with basic app	Docs here

📗 See our full list of features here

The People Behind Practica.js

Steering Committee

Practica is a community-driven open-source project. It's being led voluntarily by engineers from many different companies. These companies are just a few who encourage their engineers to contribute and keep this project moving. 💚

A Nasdaq 100 company, a world leader in design software

Leader IoT provider, part of 'Cox Communication', the 3rd largest cable company in the US

Core Team

Yoni Goldberg Independent Node.js consultant	Michael Solomon Node.js lead
Raz Luvaton Node.js developer	Daniel Gluskin Node.js lead
Ariel Steiner Node.js developer	Tomer Kohane Frontend geek
Dan Goldberg Node.js lead	Ron Dahan Node.js expert

Partners

These companies are keen for continuous improvement and their engineers to have been known to contribute during work hours.

Our Amazing Contributors 💚

A million thanks to these great people who have contributed code to our project:

Brian Clark 💻	Raz Luvaton 🖋	Michael Solomon 💻	itainoam 💻 📆
shanizlo 💻	Ron Dahan 💻	AlonK 💻	Jose Luis Alvarez Herrera 🖋 💻
reinaldo-calderon-team 💻	KarelVerschraegen 📖	Daniel Morrison 🖋	Sean Lowe 💡 🖋
idobetesh 💻	Alejandra Acosta 💻	adandanielteamint 🖋	Rashad Majali 💻
yohai zvuloon 🖋	Yonatan Kra 🖋	Yoni Rapoport 🖋	perilevy 💻
ToMer-K 💻	hen arbel 💻	Mojca Ostir 💻	evbambly 🖋
Amir Adar 🖋	Sebastien Vaucouleur 🖋