Express & mongoose REST API Boilerplate - port to plain ES6 without Babel and Bluebird

This is a simple and straightforward port of the excellent express-mongoose-es6-rest-api project.

Changes:

• Not using Babel and Bluebird but plain ES6, as supported by node version 6.9.x; this means there is also no gulp serve process anymore, simplifying and speeding up the development process

• I ported the gulpfile.babel.js file to a gulpfile.js file (plain ES6) and stripped it down to just the production "build" command, the other commands (gulp serve) aren't needed anymore because we're not using Babel.

• I took out the code coverage tools (further simplifying the toolchain)

• it's based on ES6 (also known as ECMAScript 2015), so using Arrow functions, Promises and so on (but not ES6 style import/export). This means it will work only with newer node.js versions (I'm using and recommending node.js v.6.9)

• it uses ABSOLUTE paths for importing modules, so instead of User = require('../models/user') we simply use User = require('models/user') - simpler and less error-prone (and it allows you to more easily move modules to a different directory as part of a refactoring); the absolute paths are made possible by setting the NODE_PATH variable in the startup scripts

Building the app and running in production with pm2

Building the app is done as described in the original docs.

When serving the app with pm2 I ran into a few problems which I solve by adding a pm2.json file with startup options for pm2 (for instance: the NODE_ENV and NODE_PATH). To start the app, you should use the following commands:

# move into the dist directory you've copied - THIS IS IMPORTANT, PM2 NEEDS TO BE RUN FROM WITHIN THE DIST DIRECTORY !!
cd dist

# start the app:
pm2 start pm2.json

When you install a new version (changing the dist files), you need to manually stop/restart the app.

Alternatively you could change the option watch in the pm2.json file from false to true (haven't tried that myself though).

pm2 also allows you to start the app automatically when the server (re)starts, haven't tried that out however.

More info

For more information, including how to install and use the starter, I refer to the original documentation.