go-backend-starter-template

Welcome to the repo, this purpose of which is to provide some boiler plate code for backend go projects. I'm using this as a starter point for a lot of future projects. It includes the following features:

• PostgreSQL Database: Integrated with a PostgreSQL database.
• Docker: Containerised with a Dockerfile.
• Goose: Uses Goose for database migration handling.
• Docker Compose: Uses Docker Compose for local development setup.
• Air: Supports hot module reloading with Air.

Getting Started

To get started with this project, clone the repository and follow the instructions below (more instructions will be added soon).

git clone https://github.com/anishsharma21/go-backend-starter-template.git
cd go-backend-starter-template

Then, run the following command to install all the go dependencies:

go mod download

Developing locally

Begin by setting the following environment variables:

export GOOSE_DRIVER=postgres
export GOOSE_DBSTRING="host=localhost port=5432 user=admin password=secret dbname=mydb sslmode=disable"
export GOOSE_MIGRATION_DIR=migrations
export JWT_SECRET_KEY=jwtsecret

Now you need to run an instance of the local database using docker-compose. If you don't have docker or docker-compose, its pretty easy to install them so go ahead and do that - you can use this link. Then, once you have both installed (which you can check by running docker version and docker compose version), you can run the following command to start a local postgres database which will have its data persisted:

docker compose up -d

The -d flag is to run it in detached mode - without it, all the logs will appear in your terminal and you will have start a new terminal session to run further commands. It's useful to learn about docker and docker compose so you understand how to build images and manage containers locally. You can leave this postgres database running, but if you ever want to stop it, you can run docker compose down.

Then, you want to install air - this will be used for Hot Module Relooading (HMR), which enables your code to automatically recompiled and re-run when changes are made:

go install github.com/air-verse/air@latest

The configuration for air is already present in the .air.toml file so you can simply run the command air on its own from the root of the project, and your server will be started up with HMR.

Local Database migrations (goose)

Use the following command to install goose locally as it will not be included in the project as a dependency:

go install github.com/pressly/goose/v3/cmd/goose@latest

With your database running in the background from the previous docker compose instructions, check that goose is correctly connected to your database by running the following command:

goose status

Ensure your database is running, then, run the following command to run the migration up:

goose up

If the migration went well, you should see OK messages next to each applied sql file, and the final line should say successfully migrated database to version: .... You can check the status again to confirm the migrations occurred successfully. Further migration files can be created using the following command:

goose create {name of migration} sql

With the database running, run the following command to run the migration down:

goose down

When updating templates or handlers that render them, make sure to reference the globalSelectors.go file where CSS selectors are present in to reduce hard coded values and duplication throughout the code.

Tests run locally use the local postgres database. To replicate the CICD environment, you can clear your database before running the tests. Use the following command to run tests locally:

go test ./tests -v

Production Deployment

I am using Railway to deploy both my postgres database and backend go server. There is a Dockerfile in the root of the project that is used for the backend. Private networking with the database is utilised by setting the DATABASE_URL and ENV variables. The deployment should also wait for CI - i.e. Github actions to complete, before redeploying. Database migrations will be run in production based on whether the environment variable RUN_MIGRATION is set to the string true - this also requires that you set the following environment variables:

DATABASE_URL={${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}}
GOOSE_DRIVER=postgres
GOOSE_DBSTRING={${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}}
GOOSE_MIGRATION_DIR=migrations
JWT_SECRET_KEY={SET_A_SECURE_KEY}
RUN_MIGRATION={TRUE_OR_ANYTHINGELSE}

Locally, you can also run/skip database migrations by either setting the RUN_MIGRATION environment variable to true to run them, or anything else to skip them.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. Feel free to customize the content further as needed!