Nodstarter

Nodstarter is a starter application for Node.js designed to facilitate rapid RESTful API development. It provides pre-configured, secured routers, services, and models to streamline the creation of secure and scalable applications.

Table of Contents

• General Info
• Technologies
• Initial Code
• Project Structure
• Code Example
• Sign In API Call Example
• Environment Variables
• Setup
• Before Running
• Demo
• New Ideas
• Future Plans
• Contributing
• License Summary
• NPM Statistics
• Project Based

General Info

Nodstarter provides a framework for developing secure RESTful APIs quickly. It includes pre-configured routers, services, and models, allowing developers to focus on writing business logic rather than setup and configuration.

Technologies

• Node.js: JavaScript runtime for building scalable network applications.
• Express: Web framework for Node.js.
• MongoDB: NoSQL database for storing data.
• Mongoose: ORM for MongoDB.
• Lodash: Utility library for JavaScript.
• Morgan: HTTP request logger middleware.
• Body-parser: Middleware for parsing request bodies.
• Method-override: Middleware to allow HTTP verbs such as PUT or DELETE.
• Bcrypt: Library for hashing passwords.
• Express-jwt: Middleware for JWT authentication.
• Jsonwebtoken: Library for signing and verifying JSON Web Tokens.
• Cors: Middleware for enabling Cross-Origin Resource Sharing.
• Nodemon: Utility for auto-reloading the server during development.
• Testing Libraries: Supertest, Chai, and Mocha for testing.

Initial Code

Nodstarter includes models for users, posts, and categories, with predefined relationships:

• User to Posts: One-to-many.
• Posts to Categories: Many-to-many.

These components are organized into routers, controllers, and models to provide a clear structure for API development.

Project structure

├── index.js
├── package.json
├── scripts
│   └── post_install.js
└── server
    ├── api
    │   ├── categories
    │   │   ├── controller.js
    │   │   ├── model.js
    │   │   └── router.js
    │   ├── index.js
    │   ├── posts
    │   │   ├── controller.js
    │   │   ├── model.js
    │   │   └── router.js
    │   └── users
    │       ├── controller.js
    │       ├── model.js
    │       └── router.js
    ├── auth
    │   ├── controller.js
    │   ├── index.js
    │   └── routers.js
    ├── config
    │   ├── development.js
    │   ├── index.js
    │   ├── production.js
    │   └── testing.js
    ├── index.js
    ├── middleware
    │   ├── err.js
    │   └── index.js
    └── util
        ├── createRouter.js
        └── logger.js

Code example

This is the configuration to the JWT token to the user

JWT configuration

const expressJwt = require('express-jwt');
const config = require('../config');
const logger = require('../util/logger');
const jwt = require('jsonwebtoken');
const checkToken = expressJwt({
    secret: config.secrets.jwt
});
const User = require('../api/users/model');
exports.decodeToken = () => {
    return (req, res, next) => {
        if (req.query && req.query.hasOwnProperty('access_token')) {
            req.headers.authorization = 'Bearer ' + req.query.access_token;
        }
        checkToken(req, res, next);
    };
};

exports.getFreshUser = () => {
    return (req, res, next) => {
        User.findById(req.user._id)
            .then((user) => {
                if (!user) {
                    res.status(400).send('Unanuthorized');
                } else {
                    req.user = user;
                    next();
                }
            }, (err) => {
                next(err);
            });
    };
};

exports.verifyUser = () => {
    return (req, res, next) => {
        var username = req.body.username;
        var password = req.body.password;

        if (!username || !password) {
            res.status(400).send('You need a username and password');
            return;
        }

        User.findOne({
                username: username
            })
            .then((user) => {
                logger.log('the selected user from DB: ' + user);
                if (!user) {
                    logger.log('No user with the given username');
                    res.status(401).send('Invalid username or password');
                } else if (!user.authenticate(password)) {
                    logger.log('Invalid password');
                    res.status(401).send('Invalid username or password');
                } else {
                    req.user = user;
                    next();
                }
            }, (err) => {
                next(err);
            });
    };
};

exports.signToken = (id) => {
    logger.log("id is: " + id);
    return jwt.sign({
        _id: id
    }, config.secrets.jwt, {
        expiresIn: config.expireTime
    });
};

Sign in API call example

curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" --request POST --data '{"username":"test_user_4","password":"12345"}' http://localhost:3000/auth/signin

, Output

{"token":"eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJfaWQiOiI1ZTY2NjQwODYzMGE0NDE3MThiMjNhMzgiLCJpYXQiOjE1ODQ2Mzc4NDIsImV4cCI6MTU4NDY1MjI0Mn0.MODWP86ebc8XOMjDGyuvNCWWoKnQhpZpl81ynFGExG8"}

Environment variables

Nodstarter starts searching first for the following environment variables if found them will use them if not will use the default. The default values for NODE_ENV is development, NODE_PORT is 3000 and JWT is Gambell You can choose the environment for the NODE_ENV variable from one of the following profiles (development, production, testing)

1. NODE_ENV
2. NODE_PORT
3. JWT

Setup

1. Init with npm:

$ npm init

2. Install:

$ npm install nodstarter

3. Start:

$ npm start

, or use in one-line command:

$ npm init; npm install nodstarter; npm start

Before running

Please make sure that the MongoDB daemon is up and running

• Ubuntu

systemctl start mongodb

• Macos

brew services run mongodb-community

Demo

Running Tests (future plan)

Running and reviewing unit tests is a great way to get familiarized with a library and its API. You can install dependencies and run tests with the following command:

$ npm install && npm test

Future plans

1. Swagger file for the existing APIs
2. Add tests for the existing APIs
3. Ability to make nodstarter a command line to install models, controllers and routers, etc.

New Ideas

If you have new ideas about the project please describe what you want to do and changes using an issue.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

License summary

See License

NPM statistics

Project based