generator-rest

RESTful API generator using NodeJS, Express and Mongoose

Watch this video for an overview on how to use generator-rest and deploy your project to Heroku.

Here's a full commented example of the generated project. Take a look if you want to learn more about the generated code.

Features

• Highly customizable - You can choose what to install
• Really RESTful - It follows the best practices
• ES6! - Using babel
• User registration API - Using passport (optional)
• Social login API - Facebook, Google and GitHub (optional)
• Password reset API - Sending emails with SendGrid API (optional)
• Listing query strings - q, page, limit, fields etc. already provided by querymen
• Query string validator - Using querymen
• Request body validator - Using bodymen
• Standard error responses - Using querymen and bodymen error handlers
• Unit and integration tests - Using AVA
• Continuous integration support - Using Travis CI
• API docs generator - Using apidoc
• Love ♥ - Using me

Installation

First, install Yeoman and generator-rest using npm (we assume you have pre-installed node.js).

npm install -g yo
npm install -g generator-rest

Generators

Then, you can use yo to generate your project.

yo rest # generate a new project
yo rest:api # generate a new api endpoint inside your project

Commands

After you generate your project, these commands are available in package.json.

npm test # test using AVA
npm run test:unit # run unit tests
npm run test:integration # run integration tests
npm run coverage # open the last test coverage report on the browser
npm run lint # lint using ESLint
npm run dev # run the API in development mode
npm run prod # run the API in production mode
npm run build # build the project into dist folder
npm run docs # generate API docs

Playing locally

First, run the server in development mode.

$ npm run dev
Express server listening on http://0.0.0.0:9000, in development mode

If you choose to generate the authentication API, you can start to play with it.

Note that creating and authenticating users needs a master key (which is defined in the .env file)

Create a user (sign up):

curl -X POST http://0.0.0.0:9000/users -i -d "[email protected]&password=123456&access_token=MASTER_KEY_HERE"

It will return something like:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
...
{
  "id": "57d8160eabfa186c7887a8d3",
  "name": "test",
  "picture":"https://gravatar.com/avatar/55502f40dc8b7c769880b10874abc9d0?d=identicon",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "createdAt": "2016-09-13T15:06:54.633Z"
}

Authenticate the user (sign in):

curl -X POST http://0.0.0.0:9000/auth -i -u [email protected]:123456 -d "access_token=MASTER_KEY_HERE"

It will return something like:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
...
{
  "token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9",
  "user": {
    "id": "57d8160eabfa186c7887a8d3",
    "name": "test",
    "picture": "https://gravatar.com/avatar/55502f40dc8b7c769880b10874abc9d0?d=identicon",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "createdAt":"2016-09-13T15:06:54.633Z"
  }
}

Now you can use the eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9 token (it's usually greater than this) to call user protected APIs. For example, you can create a new article API using yo rest:api and make the POST /articles endpoint only accessible to authenticated users. Then, to create a new article you must pass the access_token parameter.

curl -X POST http://0.0.0.0:9000/articles -i -d "title=Awesome Article&content=Yeah Baby&access_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9"

It will return something like:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
...
{
  "id": "57d819bfabfa186c7887a8d6",
  "title": "Awesome Article",
  "content": "Yeah Baby",
  "createdAt": "2016-09-13T15:22:39.846Z",
  "updatedAt":"2016-09-13T15:22:39.846Z"
}

Some endpoints are only accessible by admin users. To create an admin user, just pass the role=admin along to other data when calling POST /users.

Deploy

You can easily build your project by executing npm run build. It will put the build files in ./dist so you can deploy its content anywhere.

Here is an example on how to deploy to Heroku using Heroku CLI:

# build files and change directory to ./dist
npm run build
cd dist

# start a new local git repository inside there
git init

# create a new heroku app
heroku apps:create my-new-app

# add heroku remote reference to the local repository
heroku git:remote --app my-new-app

# add the MongoLab addon to the heroku app
heroku addons:create mongolab

# set the environment variables to the heroku app (see the .env file in root directory)
heroku config:set MASTER_KEY=masterKey JWT_SECRET=jwtSecret

# commit and push the build files
git add -A
git commit -m "Some commit message"
git push heroku master

# open the deployed app in the browser
heroku open

The second time you deploy, you just need to:

npm run build
cd dist
git add -A
git commit -m "Some commit message"
git push heroku master
heroku open

Directory structure

Overview

You can customize the src and api directories.

src/
├─ api/
│  ├─ user/
│  │  ├─ user.controller.js
│  │  ├─ user.model.js
│  │  ├─ user.model.test.js
│  │  ├─ user.router.js
│  │  └─ user.router.test.js
│  └─ another-endpoint/
├─ config/
│  ├─ index.js
│  ├─ express.js
│  └─ mongoose.js
├─ services/
│  ├─ facebook/
│  ├─ passport/
│  ├─ sendgrid/
│  └─ your-service/
├─ app.js
├─ index.js
└─ routes.js

src/api/

Here is where the API endpoints are defined. Each API has its own folder.

src/api/some-endpoint/some-endpoint.model.js

It defines the Mongoose schema and model for the API endpoint. Any changes to the data model should be done here.

src/api/some-endpoint/some-endpoint.controller.js

This is the API controller file. It defines the main router middlewares which use the API model.

src/api/some-endpoint/some-endpoint.router.js

This is the entry file of the API. It defines the routes using, along other middlewares (like session, validation etc.), the middlewares defined in the some-endpoint.controller.js file.

services/

Here you can put helpers, libraries and other types of modules which you want to use in your APIs.

TODO

• Support optional phone authentication
• Support optional email confirmation process
• Support Twitter and other social login methods
• Socket.io support

PRs are welcome.

Credits

@QzSG and all contributors

License

MIT © Diego Haz