nodeJs Rest API Server Boilerplate with typeorm

A boilerplate/starter project for quickly building RESTful APIs using Node.js, Express, and typeorm.

By running a single command, you will get a production-ready Node.js (typescript) app installed and fully configured on your machine. The app comes with many built-in features, such as authentication using JWT, request validation, custom logging, etc. For more details, check the features list below.

Quick Start

Setup database settings inside ormconfig.json file

To create a project, simply run:

npx node-express-typeorm-app <project-name>

Or

Manual Installation

If you would still prefer to do the installation manually, follow these steps:

Clone the repo:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/OsamaShahid/node-express-typeorm-boilerplate.git
cd node-express-typeorm-boilerplate
npx rimraf ./.git

Install the dependencies:

yarn install

Set the environment variables:

cp .env.example .env

# open .env and modify the environment variables (if needed)

Table of Contents

• Features
• Commands
• Environment Variables
• Project Structure
• Error Handling
• Validation
• Authentication
• Authorization
• Logging
• Linting
• Contributing

Features

• SQL database: PostgreSQL object data modeling using TypeORM
• Authentication and authorization: using passport
• Validation: request data validation using Joi
• Logging: using winston
• Error handling: Custom error handling mechanism
• Process management: advanced production process management using PM2
• Dependency management: with NPM
• Environment variables: using dotenv and cross-env
• Security: set security HTTP headers using helmet
• Santizing: sanitize request data against xss and query injection
• CORS: Cross-Origin Resource-Sharing enabled using cors
• Compression: gzip compression with compression
• Linting: with ESLint and Prettier
• Editor config: consistent editor configuration using EditorConfig

Commands

Running locally:

npm run start:dev

Running in production:

npm run start

Linting:

# run ESLint
yarn lint

# fix ESLint errors
yarn lint:fix

# run prettier
yarn prettier

# fix prettier errors
yarn prettier:fix

Environment Variables

The environment variables can be found and modified in the .env file. They come with these default values:

# Port number
PORT=3000

# URL of the Mongo DB
MONGODB_URL=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/node-boilerplate

# JWT
# JWT secret key
JWT_SECRET=thisisasamplesecret
# Number of minutes after which an access token expires
JWT_ACCESS_EXPIRATION_MINUTES=30
# Number of days after which a refresh token expires
JWT_REFRESH_EXPIRATION_DAYS=30

# SMTP configuration options for the email service
# For testing, you can use a fake SMTP service like Ethereal: https://ethereal.email/create
SMTP_HOST=email-server
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=email-server-username
SMTP_PASSWORD=email-server-password
[email protected]

Project Structure

src\
 |--config\         # Environment variables and configuration related things
 |--controllers\    # Route controllers (controller layer)
 |--middlewares\    # Custom express middlewares
 |--models\         # typeorm entity models (data layer)
 |--routes\         # Routes
 |--manager\       # Business logic (service layer)
 |--utils\          # Utility classes and functions
 |--helper\validations\    # Request data validation schemas
 |--app.ts          # Express app
 |--index.ts        # App entry point

API Endpoints

List of available routes:

Auth routes:
POST /v1/auth/register - register
POST /v1/auth/login - login
POST /v1/auth/refresh-tokens - refresh auth tokens
POST /v1/auth/forgot-password - send reset password email
POST /v1/auth/reset-password - reset password
POST /v1/auth/send-verification-email - send verification email
POST /v1/auth/verify-email - verify email

Error Handling

The app has a custom error handling mechanism.

Controllers should try to catch the errors and log them using custom logger and forward them to the api response.

Validation

Request data is validated using Joi. Check the documentation for more details on how to write Joi validation schemas.

The validation schemas are defined in the src/validations directory and are used in the routes by providing them as parameters to the validate middleware.

const express = require('express');
const validate = require('../../middlewares/validate');
const userValidation = require('../../validations/user.validation');
const userController = require('../../controllers/user.controller');

const router = express.Router();

router.post('/users', validate(userValidation.createUser), userController.createUser);

Authentication

To require authentication for certain routes, you can use the auth middleware.

const express = require('express');
const auth = require('../../middlewares/auth');
const userController = require('../../controllers/user.controller');

const router = express.Router();

router.post('/users', auth(), userController.createUser);

These routes require a valid JWT access token in the Authorization request header using the Bearer schema. If the request does not contain a valid access token, an Unauthorized (401) error is thrown.

Generating Access Tokens:

An access token can be generated by making a successful call to the register (POST /v1/auth/register) or login (POST /v1/auth/login) endpoints. The response of these endpoints also contains refresh tokens (explained below).

An access token is valid for 30 minutes. You can modify this expiration time by changing the JWT_ACCESS_EXPIRATION_MINUTES environment variable in the .env file.

Refreshing Access Tokens:

After the access token expires, a new access token can be generated, by making a call to the refresh token endpoint (POST /v1/auth/refresh-tokens) and sending along a valid refresh token in the request body. This call returns a new access token and a new refresh token.

A refresh token is valid for 30 days. You can modify this expiration time by changing the JWT_REFRESH_EXPIRATION_DAYS environment variable in the .env file.

Authorization

The auth middleware can also be used to require certain rights/permissions to access a route.

const express = require('express');
const auth = require('../../middlewares/auth');
const userController = require('../../controllers/user.controller');

const router = express.Router();

router.post('/users', auth('manageUsers'), userController.createUser);

In the example above, an authenticated user can access this route only if that user has the manageUsers permission.

The permissions are role-based. You can view the permissions/rights of each role in the src/config/roles.js file.

If the user making the request does not have the required permissions to access this route, a Forbidden (403) error is thrown.

Logging

Import the logger from src/helper/console.ts. It is using the Winston logging library.

Logging should be done according to the following severity levels (ascending order from most important to least important):

import { logger } from '<path to src>/helper';

logger.error('message'); // level 0
logger.important('message'); // level 0
logger.mute('message'); // level: 0
logger.debug('message'); // level 0
logger.warn('message'); // level 1
logger.success('message'); // level 2
logger.info('message'); // level 3

Contributing

Contributions are more than welcome! Please check out the contributing guide.

Inspirations

• danielfsousa/express-rest-es2017-boilerplate
• madhums/node-express-mongoose
• kunalkapadia/express-mongoose-es6-rest-api

License

MIT