express-js-template

Overview

This is a template for an ExpressJS server. It includes a project agnostic setup that will allow you to focus on business-related programming

This template is the backend part of a P/MERN template - paired with ReactJs Template

Table of contents

• Overview
• Getting started
• Features
  • User analytics
  • PrismaORM Database
  • Security
  • Payment processing
  • Authentication & Authorization
  • Logging
  • Extensive Test Coverage

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

Node.js

• NodeJS - This template is designed to work with node version 22.14.0

Docker & Docker Compose

We use docker compose from Docker to setup the services for development environment.

• For MacOS: Grab the docker mac installation from the Docker website

Installation

npm and Node.js dependencies

Install dependencies:

npm install

Running Locally

Set up environment variables

We use Node's inbuilt env variables injection via process.env.VARIABLE_NAME syntax

Copy the .env.example file and configure each variable

Start Docker services

If you installed Docker Desktop (on a Mac or Windows machine), you can run the following command to start the Docker services:

npm run start:docker

This will run docker compose up --build --watch which will start the backend and the PostgreSQL database

Note: for practicality, the database credentials for the local environment are hardcoded in the compose.yaml file

The application will now be reachable on http://localhost:3000

User Analytics

This template uses Posthog Node for comprehensive user analytics

Logging

We use Pinojs for logging which uses transports to record logs - Currently configured transports are:

• Betterstack
• MongoDB

Log Visualization

This template uses Betterstack to visualize logs - Modify as required

Recommended third-party tools

• PostgreSQL Database
  • This template is using Supabase free tier to host a free PostgreSQL database. This can be enough for a dev env workload but production workload will require updatingw
• Koyeb Deployment
  • This template is using Koyeb for deployments - Its pretty affordable and has autoscaling to 0 to save costs

Security

Request slowing & limiting

To guarantee API resilence and provide protection against attacks, the following has been implemented

• express-rate-limit
  • Helps with brute force attacks, DDoS, Scraping & API abuse
• express-slow-down
  • Gives the server breathing room under heavy load