VeAPI, staring Express TypeORM REST API

• Syllabus
• Features

• Getting Started
  • Step 1: Set up the Development Environment
  • Step 2: Create a new project
  • Step 3: Serve your application
• Scripts and Tasks
  • Install
  • Linting
  • Running the app in development
  • Building and running the app in production
• API Routes
• Project Structure
• Logging

Syllabus

Veapi.pdf

Features

• JWT based user authentication with jsonwebtoken and express-jwt.
• Dependency Injection with TypeDI.
• ORM with support for many databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQLite, MongoDB, and more) with TypeORM.
• Clear and organised structure with different layers such as entities, services, middlewares, loaders, etc.
• Validation thanks to class-validator.
• Unit and Integration Testing with Jest.
• Security Features with Helmet.
• Role-based access control using a custom-built middleware.
• Simple Data Seeding with custom-built factories and Faker.js.
• Code generator for entity, service, route, factory, seed, test with a custom-built generator script and CLI tool Commander.

Getting Started

Step 1: Set up the Development Environment

Install Node.js and NPM

Install a MongoDB server or use MongoDB Atlas

Step 2: Create a new project

Fork or download this project and modify package.json for your new project.

Make a copy of the .env.example file and rename it to .env.

Create a new database and add the connection string in the .env file.

Install the required packages.

npm install

This installs all the dependencies with NPM.

Now your development environment should be ready to use!

Step 3: Serve your application

Go to the root directory and start your app with this npm script.

npm run dev

This starts a local server using nodemon and ts-node. The server base endpoint will be http://127.0.0.1:3000 where 3000 is the PORT variable you set in the .env file.

Scripts and Tasks

Install

• Install all dependencies with npm install

Linting

• Run code syntax and format checking using npm run lint which runs eslint.
• Automatically fix lint errors with npm run lint:fix.

Running the app in development

• Run npm run dev to start nodemon with ts-node.
• The server base endpoint will be http://127.0.0.1:3000 where 3000 is the PORT variable you set in the .env file.

Building and running the app in production

• Run npm run build to compile all the Typescript sources and generate JavaScript files.
• To start the built app located in build use npm start.

API Routes

The route prefix is /api by default, but you can change this in the .env file.

Route	Description
/api	Base endpoint
/api/auth/login	Auth - login endpoint
/api/auth/register	Auth - register endpoint
/api/user	Example entity endpoint - returns all users
/api/user/current	Example entity endpoint - returns current logged in user
...	...

Project Structure

Name	Description
database/	Local database server data
build/	Compiled source files will be placed here
commands/	Custom CLI command tools used with npm scripts
src/	Source files
src/api/middlewares/	Custom middlewares
src/api/entities/	TypeORM Entities (Database models)
src/api/services/	Service layer
src/config/	The configuration file which loads env variables
src/database/factories	Factories generate entities with mock data
src/database/seeds	Seeds use factories to save mock data in the database
src/loaders/	Loader is where the app is configured and database is loaded
src/types/ *.d.ts	Custom type definitions
test *.spec.ts	Unit and integration tests
.env.example	Environment configurations
docker-compose.yml	docker dev-env configurations

Logging

For logging we use winston.