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 fully commented example of the generated project. Take a look if you want to learn more about the generated code.

• 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 Jest
• Continuous integration support - Using Travis CI
• API docs generator - Using apidoc
• Love ♥ - Using me

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

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

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

npm test # test using Jest
npm run test:unit # run unit tests
npm run test:integration # run integration tests
npm run coverage # test and open the coverage report in 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 docs # generate API docs

First, you will need to install and run MongoDB in another terminal instance.

$ mongod

Then, run the server in development mode.

$ npm run dev
Express server listening on http://0.0.0.0:9500, 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://0.0.0.0:9500/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://0.0.0.0:9500/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://0.0.0.0:9500/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.

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

# start a new local git repository
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 files
git add -A
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git push heroku master

# open the deployed app in the browser
heroku open

The second time you deploy, you just need to:

git add -A
git commit -m "Update code"
git push heroku master

You can customize the src and api directories.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

PRs are welcome.

@QzSG and all contributors

MIT © Diego Haz