express

JS > Express

Dependencies

NodeJS uses its own package manager 'npm' to control the dependencies of a project. Packages can be published to an npm respository (https://www.npmjs.com/) for others to install for their own projects. Installed packages can be located within the node_modules directory which should be ignored from source control.

The packages for a project are specifed within the package.json file at the root of the project. Installing a package on the command line will also append the package to your package.json dependencies. Dependencies in the package.json can also specified for the environment which requires them.

To install all dependencies for development & testing, run the command below;

npm install

When wanting to install dependencies only for running the the api (e.g; production), use the command below;

npm install --only=prod

Running

After installing the necessary dependencies, you can choose to run the application via npm or node;

via npm

npm start

via node

node app.js

You can ensure the application is running successfully by sending a GET request to the /ping endpoint of the running api.

C:\> curl http://localhost:8080/ping
pong

Configuration

A configuration file can be found with the naming convention config.<environment>.json. This file simply configures which port and host binding to set for the api.

{
    "hostname": "0.0.0.0",
    "port": 8080
}

Testing

For the js/express api, we've decided to use Jest, a testing framework developed by Facebook. Once the jest node package has been installed, you can use the command below to run the unit tests;

npm test

Linting

The eslint package is used to check through the code base for syntax and code smells. Use the command below to run eslint;

npm run lint

Note, this will only give a verbose output when issues have been found. The configuration for eslint's ruling has been set to default and tweaked to standards we feel comfortable with (additional/overwriting rules are defined within .eslintrc files).

Docker 🐳

This API is supported with Docker. You can check out how to run it by following the instructions in the root README here.

Resource Documentation

• eslint: https://eslint.org/docs/user-guide/getting-started
• express: https://expressjs.com/en/starter/installing.html
• jest: https://jestjs.io/docs/getting-started
• nodejs: https://nodejs.org/en/docs/