NodeJS Slender

This is a barebone boilerplate for creating a nodejs api. It comes with the following features:

• 🗂 MongoDB intergation
• 🔐 JWT Authentication
• 📨 Templated emails using MJML and Mustache 🧔🏽
• ✅ Request body validation using Joi

---

• NodeJS Slender
  • Creating a new project
  • Authentication
    • Middleware
    • Routes
  • Send emails from your app
    • Templated emails
    • Simple emails
  • Validation

---

Creating a new project

For creating a new project you can just clone this repo and change the origin.

git clone git@github.com:txbivs/nodejs-slender.git <projectname> && cd <projectname>
git remote set-url origin <your-repo>

After that you need to setup the environment. Start by typing the following command in your terminal of choice:

cp .env.sample .env

That copies the sample .env file. Now you need to populate that with your own data.

Next you need to install the dependencies using your package manager of choice, I use yarn.

yarn install

To start the app you need to type in one of the following commands depending on your current situation.

# Start app in development mode, with hot reloading enabled 
yarn dev

# Start app in production mode
yarn start

---

Authentication

The authentication is done using JWT. The generated token must be send with every following request in the Authorization header.

Middleware

To protect a route from unauthenticated users, you can add the auth middleware to it. To do that, you attach it to the controller's export array. The last element of this array is the actual function. The elements before are used as middleware.

Routes

For the authentication the following routes are predefined and used:

• POST /register

  Creates a new user based on the incoming request body.

  Request:

  • firstName: string, required The first name of the new user

  • lastName: string, required The last name of the new user

  • email: string, email, unique, required The users email. An email can only be registered once.

  • password: string, min(6), required The plaintext password. Will be hashed using bcrypt.

  Response: Responds with the created user. If failed -> returns errors.

  Sample:

  body: {
      "firstName": "John",
      "lastName": "Doe",
      "email": "jd@example.dev",
      "password:": "!secret$"
  }

• POST /login

  Attempts a login with the given credentials.

  Request:

  • email: string, email, required The users email.

  • password: string, required The plaintext password.

  Response: If valid -> returns the generated jwt token, if failed -> returns a 401 Unauthorized with a reason.

  Sample:

  body: {
      "firstName": "John",
      "lastName": "Doe",
      "email": "jd@example.dev",
      "password:": "!secret$"
  }

• POST /verify

  Attempts the confirmation of an account using the confirmKey.

  Request:

  • confirmKey: string, length(16), required The given 16 digit confirmation key

  Response: If valid -> returns the generated jwt token, if failed -> returns a 401 Unauthorized with a reason.

  Sample:

  body: {
      "confirmKey": "ld84jflsow39lc0e"
  }

---

Send emails from your app

There are two possible ways of sending an email. You can use mjml and mustache to generate beautiful, responsive emails with variables in a few lines of code, or just ship generic html or plaintext emails.

Templated emails

To use the built-in email functionality you have to add your templates first. Add your template as <name>.mjml to the mail/template folder. You can create subfolders in the mail/template folder for organization, but keep in mind that you need to append that subfolder name to the path to the template when attempting to render it!

Let's assume you created a new template under mail/template/monitoring/ping.mjml. For sending an email the only code you need is the following:

const Mail = require('path/to/mail/Mail');

// Create a new Mail instance by giving it the receipient and a subject.
let mail = new Mail('to@example.dev', 'Monitoring Alert');

// Render the variables by specifying the template and an object with the variable data.
// The sample assumes you have used the variables {{ url }} and {{ downtime }} in your mjml-template.
mail.render('monitoring/ping', {
    host: '127.0.0.1',
    downtime: '20m'
});

mail.send();

The send() function will return a Promise. So if you want to do something with failed emails, like logging or resending them after 1 day, or wait for the email to be sent, you can use the following code:

mail.send().then(() => {
    // Do something on success.
}).catch((err) => {
    console.error(err);
    // Do something with the failed email.
});

Simple emails

If you just want to send a basic email without templating and mjml, you can use the mail/mailer module. Import it and use the send function.

const mailer = require('path/to/mail/mailer');

mailer.send(_to, _subject, _htmlOrText, _from);

This function is returing a Promise too.

---

Validation

Validation is super easy with this boilerplate. All the validation rules are stored in the validation/rules module. You can create your own files, but make sure you require them in where you need them. These rules are basicly just objects consumed by Joi. To enable validation for a new route, add the route segments to the validation/rules module and add the validator middleware to your desired route.

For example you want to enable validation for the route POST /posts you would create an object under posts.create with your desired validation rules. After that, go into your PostController and add the following import:

const { posts } = require('path/to/validation/rules');

and add the middleware to your method:

exports.create = [
    auth,
    validator(posts.create),
    (req, res) => {
        // Your controller logic
    }
];