DG Express Generator
This is my own take on the express-generator CLI that comes with ExpressJS. I made this project because I always spend quite some time brining the default ExpressJS template up to speed. Especially when I have to constantly spin up new micro-services.
A nice feature of my project is the simplicity on how you can customize it yourself. If you have your own style, you can just clone this repo and edit the source folder to your liking. But before you do that, check the list of features bellow. So... buckle up, scroll down and enjoy 🙂.
How to go about this
The source folder have 2 templates, one for when you need to build a Website in ExpressJS, and the other is when you need to build an API. In this case the API template is a striped down version of the Website folder, with some minor changes of course. Bellow you can check the list of all the shared features, but not limited to the features that they don't share in common.
Shared Key Features
- My personal commenting style that I like
- Simplified and explained the
serverfile so from the start you know what each line of code dose - By default I use clustering
- Redesigned how errors are handled and displayed
- Sentry Support by default set it to report crashes only in production
- By default I use Knex to talk with the database
- Code that starts the server is in
workersfolder since it is a worker, and since I always end up with more the the server I have everything in place - End everything is organized how I like it :)
Website
- Redirect to HTTPS in production
- By default I use compression when sending requests
- By default I use Hogan for the templating - nice and simple
- Favicon done right. Make your own five icon using Real Favicon Generator
- Basic Open Graph support
- Twitter Cards support
API
- Throw error if there is no HTTPS in production
- Remove the ETag from the header response
- Removed the Data entry in the header response
- Built in check for an API Key
The whole flow to have the project up and running is this:
$ npm install express-generator-dg -g
Once you have this npm package installed globally, you can use it anywhere. Go to a folder where you want to create a new project and:
$ express-generator-dg NAME_OF_THE_FOLDER
Select the option that best suit your needs. Then you'll have to go in to the directory you just created and type:
$ npm install
Then you'll need to create a .env file to load your environment variables in to memory thanks to foreman, or you can also just install another tool that I made called env-auto like so:
$ npm install env-auto -g
and then in the root folder of your project type:
$ env-auto
to get the .env file automatically created from the app.json file. Last thing would be to start the whole thing with:
$ npm start
WARNING
This tool will override, destroy, kill and crash everything in its path - you've been warned ;)
Fork It
This project was designed to allow you to make it your own - thanks to it simplicity. Once forked you just have to change the content of the source folder, and you have your own easy to use template up and running when you need it.
The End
If you've enjoyed this article/project, please consider giving it a 🌟 or donate.
Also check out my GitHub account, where I have other articles and apps that you might find interesting.
Where to follow
You can follow me on social media 🐙😇, at the following locations:
More about me
I don’t only live on GitHub, I try to do many things not to get bored 🙃. To learn more about me, you can visit the following links: