nodejs-express-web-service

A stripped-down example of a dockerized Express (4.x) web service,

based on the official Docker image for Node.js.

Table of Contents

• Makefile
  • Build the Docker image and run a container
  • Update the package-lock.json dependencies
• server.js file

Makefile

The Makefile can be used to easily manage the web service using GNU Make (on Linux, macOS and Windows (Cygwin)).

Build the Docker image and run a container

make reinit

will re(build)/re(run) the image/container (named - literally - servicename:latest)

and serve an instance of the web service via: http://localhost:8080/servicename

It's a handy shortcut that you can use to reload the web service after code has changed.

For more fine-grained control, please have a look at the included Makefile.

Update the package-lock.json dependencies

make lock

will update your package.json dependencies and create a package-lock.json thereafter

so that the build process is reproducible and deterministic, thus production-ready.

Note that only MINOR and PATCH versions are udpated automatically so as to not break something.*

*) assuming that the Node.js packages are following Semantic Versioning best practices.

server.js file

The server.js file contains the server's JS code. It's just a skeleton, but you can easily add, e.g.,

• more routes,
• middleware functions,
• etc.

And you are strongly encouraged to test your web service with, e.g., Mocha ☕ and Chai.