DEV Bootcamp Backend Starter

Getting Started

To start your project built off of this repository, click the Fork button in the top right of the github GUI. This will create a copy of this repository under your account. Share this repository with your team members so that everyone may work off of it.

Running the project

Make sure necessary environment variables have been set, which includes the DB credentials. To create an ElephantSQL database and access the required credentials, see the section on setting up the development environment.

npm i
npm run dev

Project Layout

Project Structure

The repo was built by the general frontend web file structure conventions we use at DEV. It has react-router, apollo-client, and ThemeProvider from styled-components set up in src/App.js.

project-repo-name
|
└───node_modules
|
└───data
│
└───src
│   │   cleanup.js
|   |   index.js
│   │
│   └───config
|   |   └───index.js
│   |
│   └───db
│   |   └───migrations
│   |   └───seeds
│   │
│   └───graphql
│   |   └───resolvers.js
│   |   └───router.js
│   |   └───typeDefs.js
│   |   └───Mutation
│   |   └───Query
│   |
│   └───lib
│   |   └───auth
│   |   └───context
│   |   └───cronjob
│   |   └───formatError
│   |   └───knex
│   |   └───permissions
│   |
│   └───models
│       └───BaseModel.js
|
└───test
|
|   .env
|   .eslintrc.json
|   .gitignore
|   knexfile.js
|   nodemon.json
|   package-lock.json
|   package.json
|   README.md

Important Directories and Files

• src

  • The main directory. Used to store all application code.

• src/index.js

  • This is where the server itself is set up using Express. Cron jobs can be added here.

• config/index.js

  • Used to store constants that are important to the functionality of the app (like API urls, API keys, database credentials, etc.)

• .env

  • Here is where all the sensitive environment variables that are referenced by the config live.

• migrations

  • This is where all migrations are kept. Make sure to only add migrations with the command npx knex migrate:make <name>

• graphql/typeDefs.js

  • Here is the GraphQL TypeDefs.

• graphql/Mutation & graphql/Query

  • Under the Mutation and Query folders are all the resolvers. What is here corresponds directly to what is in the TypeDefs.

• graphql/router.js

  • Here is where the GraphQL router is set up. It handles all the network requests. If you need to apply any middleware. it should be done here.

• lib

  • This directory contains library code that is used across the app. The only things that are really important to understand are the password and token helpers.

• models

  • This is where all the Objection models are kept. Make sure to keep this in sync with any changes to the migrations.

Set up a development environment

• To make development easier, we will use ElephantSQL's free plan to host a different database in the cloud for each engineer. It is always on and never fails so your computer stays free.

  • Sign up for a free personal account here. There is also a log in with Github option.
  • Once you have signed in, click the Create New Instance button on the top right.
  • Add a name, probably something like app-name-db and keep it on the free Tiny Turtle plan. You shouldn't need to add any payment information! Press Select Region.
  • Select the US-East-1 as the region and press Review. and then Create Instance.
  • This should take you back to your list of your created instances (databases). Click on the one you just made.
  • Under the Details section you should see Server, User & Default database, and Password. These are the credentials you need to connect to the database.

• Connect to the database

  • Run cp sample.env .env in your terminal to create the .env file.
  • Add all the credentials from ElephantSQL to the corresponding fields in the .env file. It should probably end up looking something like this:
    
    

  DB_HOST=salt.db.elephantsql.com
  DB_DATABASE=abcdefgh
  DB_USER=abcdefgh
  DB_PASSWORD=abcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefgh
  DB_PORT=5432
  NODE_ENV=development