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