README.md

NodeJS API Template

Warning

This starter kit is no longer recommended. Use the Northwestern Laravel Starter to develop APIs instead.

This is a JSON:API service that can be quickly deployed to AWS. The tech stack is:

• Express
  • dougmoscrop/serverless-http, to make it event-driven instead of a server when deployed
  • nusso for authentication
• yayson for serializing/deserialzing JSON:API requests
• mocha & chai (with chai-http) for testing

Note that this does not include a database driver out of the box.

Running for Development

You will need NodeJS and Yarn installed.

# Set up .env file w/ DB credentials/etc
$ cp -r .env.example .env
$ vi .env # or your editor of choice -- set the missing variables (and add your own, etc)

$ yarn install

# Verify everything is working
$ yarn test

# Start the server
$ yarn start

Visit http://localhost:3000 to confirm the API is up.

Customizing

The following files should be customized:

• middleware/authorization.js should load users/permissions from your user provider
• controllers/health.js should include app-specific checks
• iac/modules/microservice.tf should have your app name
• iac/develop needs to have the example files copied to .tf files and customized with environment variables/etc

Deploying to AWS

The included Jenkinsfile will run the deployment to AWS. Assuming you have customized the IaC files listed above, it should Just Work™.

One of the outputs from Terraform will be the Amazon API endpoint. This module does not set up a custom domain for it; instead, we have been using Apigee as a vanity domain for these services.