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[!SUMMARY]- Table of Contents - [[Getting Started#Initialising Package.json|Initialising Package.json]] - [[Getting Started#Installing Packages|Installing Packages]] - [[Getting Started#Create file and folders|Create file and folders]] - [[Getting Started#Making Changes in package.json|Making Changes in package.json]] - [[Getting Started#Further Things|Further Things]] - [[Getting Started#Basic Code|Basic Code]]

Initialising Package.json

  • Create a folder for your back-end project open terminal in vs code and write npm init in it.
npm init

- It will ask various questions answer them and then create a Package.json file in you folder.

Installing Packages

Write following line in your terminal.

npm install express dotenv mongoose cors

npm i nodemon prettier -D

This will install express, dotenv and mongoose in your dependencies and nodemon in your dev dependencies (Check your package.json to confirm).

Create file and folders

Create folder such as follows - public (folder) - to keep all public files - temp - to keep all the temporary files like images. - .gitkeep - src (folder)- all source code - index.js (file) - first file to run - app.js (file) - - constants (file) - to keep all the constants - controllers (folder) - to keep all the functionalities files - routes (folder) - to keep all the routes files - config (folder) - all the configuration (database and third party api) related files - middlewares (folder) - all the middlewares - utils (folder) - all the utility files and functions - models (folder) - to store all the schema and models of mongoose - .env (file) - stores all the environment variables. - .gitignore - keeps files names you do not want in GitHub repo. - .prettierrc - to store prettier configuration - .prettierignore - to store all the files that prettier should ignore

Create .env file and add your environment variables.

PORT = 3000

Create .gitignore and add the files you do not want in your GitHub repo. You can also use gitignore generator to generate it.

node_modules
.env

Create .prettierrc and add the configurations

{
  "singleQuote": false,
  "bracketSpacing": true,
  "tabWidth": 2,
  "trailingComma": "es5",
  "semi": true,
  "printWidth": 120
}

Create .prettierignore and add the configurations. You can also use prettierignore generator to generate it.

*.env
.env
.env.*
/.vscode
/node_modules
./dist

Making Changes in package.json

  • Add Start and dev scripts in your package.json and also include type module in it.
"type": "module",
"scripts": {
        "start": "node index.js",
        "dev": "nodemon index.js"
    }

This is how it will look

{
    "name": "chaibackend",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "A backend project to learn Backend",
    "main": "index.js",
    "type": "module",
    "scripts": {
        "dev": "nodemon src/index.js",
        "start": "node src/index.js"
    },
    "keywords": [
    "Javascript",
    "Backend"
    ],
    "author": "Harsh Sharma",
    "license": "ISC",
    "devDependencies": {
        "nodemon": "^3.0.3",
        "prettier": "3.2.4"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "dotenv": "^16.3.2",
        "express": "^4.18.2",
        "mongoose": "^8.1.0"
    }
}
  • removed test script and added start and dev script
  • added type as module which will enable ES 6 imports

Now you can run the backend by writing

npm run dev

Further Things

Project Setup

  • [[Create Express App]] - Create express server and set up some basic middlewares.
  • [[Connect Database]] - Connect to MongoDB Database
  • Add utility Function and classes
    • [[AsyncHandler]] - Utility function to get a generalised try catch function.
    • [[ApiError]] - Utility class to standardise the error shown
    • [[ApiResponse]] - Utility class to standardise the response returned
  • [[Modelling Schema]] - Model your mongoose schema
  • [[Handle File upload]] - Backend to upload file if any
  • [[Setup Postman]] - setup postman for easy url testing

Creating actual backend

- [[Make Routes]] - Start making routes

Basic Code

Write the following code in your main entry point file e.g. Index.js.

import express from 'express'
import 'dotenv/config';
import cors from 'cors';

const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;

app.use(
    cors({
        origin: process.env.CORS_ORIGIN,
        credentials: true,
    })
);

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.send('Hello World!')
})

app.listen(port, () => {
console.log(`Example app listening on port ${port}`)
})

This code will create a server that will listen to port 3000 and has create a ' / ' route which will return Hello world in return.