Graphql API Node Server Boilerplate

A boilerplate/starter project for quickly building Graphql APIs using Node.js,Apollo-server Express, PostgeSQL, Prisma and Firebase auth.

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

Quick Start

Clone the repo:

git clone git@github.com:Boncom99/server-boiler-plate.git
cd server-boiler-plate

Install the dependencies:

npm install

Set the environment variables:

cp .env.example .env

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

Docker:

 docker-compose up -d

Table of Contents

• Features
• Commands
• Environment Variables
• Project Structure
• API Documentation
• Error Handling
• Validation
• Authentication
• Authorization
• Logging
• Custom Mongoose Plugins
• Linting
• Contributing

Features

• PostgreSQL database: PostgreSQL using Prisma
• Authentication and authorization: using Firebase
• Validation: request data validation using Joi
• Logging: using winston and morgan
• Testing: unit and integration tests using Jest
• Error handling: centralized error handling mechanism
• API documentation: with swagger-jsdoc and swagger-ui-express
• Process management: advanced production process management using PM2
• Dependency management: with npm
• Environment variables: using dotenv
• 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
• CI: continuous integration with Travis CI
• Docker support
• Code coverage: using coveralls
• Code quality: with Codacy
• Git hooks: with husky and lint-staged
• Linting: with ESLint and Prettier
• Editor config: consistent editor configuration using EditorConfig

Commands

Running locally:

npm start

Project Structure

src\
 |--config\         # Environment variables and configuration related things
 |--controllers\    # Route controllers (controller layer)
 |--docs\           # Swagger files
 |--middlewares\    # Custom express middlewares
 |--models\         # Mongoose models (data layer)
 |--routes\         # Routes
 |--services\       # Business logic (service layer)
 |--utils\          # Utility classes and functions
 |--validations\    # Request data validation schemas
 |--app.js          # Express app
 |--index.js        # App entry point

The app has a centralized error handling mechanism.

Controllers should try to catch the errors and forward them to the error handling middleware (by calling next(error)). For convenience, you can also wrap the controller inside the catchAsync utility wrapper, which forwards the error.

const catchAsync = require('../utils/catchAsync');

const controller = catchAsync(async (req, res) => {
  // this error will be forwarded to the error handling middleware
  throw new Error('Something wrong happened');
});

The error handling middleware sends an error response, which has the following format:

{
  "code": 404,
  "message": "Not found"
}

When running in development mode, the error response also contains the error stack.

The app has a utility ApiError class to which you can attach a response code and a message, and then throw it from anywhere (catchAsync will catch it).

For example, if you are trying to get a user from the DB who is not found, and you want to send a 404 error, the code should look something like:

const httpStatus = require('http-status');
const ApiError = require('../utils/ApiError');
const User = require('../models/User');

const getUser = async (userId) => {
  const user = await User.findById(userId);
  if (!user) {
    throw new ApiError(httpStatus.NOT_FOUND, 'User not found');
  }
};

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/config/logger.js. 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):

const logger = require('<path to src>/config/logger');

logger.error('message'); // level 0
logger.warn('message'); // level 1
logger.info('message'); // level 2
logger.http('message'); // level 3
logger.verbose('message'); // level 4
logger.debug('message'); // level 5

In development mode, log messages of all severity levels will be printed to the console.

In production mode, only info, warn, and error logs will be printed to the console.
It is up to the server (or process manager) to actually read them from the console and store them in log files.

Note: API request information (request url, response code, timestamp, etc.) are also automatically logged.

Linting

Linting is done using ESLint and Prettier. It also extends eslint-config-prettier to turn off all rules that are unnecessary or might conflict with Prettier.

To modify the ESLint configuration, update the .eslintrc.json file. To modify the Prettier configuration, update the .prettierrc file.

To prevent a certain file or directory from being linted, add it to .eslintignore and .prettierignore.