Build an app using Express in TypeScript, AWS PostgreSQL as database, Nuxt.js (Vue related framework) as frontend framework

Set up backend part

• npm init -y

• npm i typescript ts-node nodemon @types/node @types/express -D

• npm i apollo-server-express express graphql type-graphql class-validator typeorm reflect-metadata

  • typeorm is a kind of Node.js ORM

---

Install a database driver:

for MySQL or MariaDB

npm install mysql (you can install mysql2 instead as well)

for PostgreSQL or CockroachDB

npm install pg

for SQLite
npm install sqlite3

---

add "start" script

• about nodemon –exec, passing –exec tells nodemon to run a different program, instead of node. He's using ts-node as the executable since it's a TypeScript project. You can run and monitor other programs, such as python, ruby, etc. as well.

  "scripts": {
    "start": "nodemon --exec ts-node src/index.ts",
    "build": "tsc",
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  }

---

Now your package.json should looks like this

{
  "name": "be",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "nodemon --exec ts-node src/index.ts",
    "build": "tsc",
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/express": "^4.17.9",
    "@types/node": "^14.14.8",
    "nodemon": "^2.0.6",
    "ts-node": "^9.0.0",
    "typescript": "^4.0.5"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "apollo-server-express": "^2.19.0",
    "express": "^4.17.1",
    "graphql": "^15.4.0",
    "reflect-metadata": "^0.1.13",
    "type-graphql": "^1.1.1",
    "typeorm": "^0.2.29"
  }
}

---

add database

• create a PostgreSQL database on AWS

• install database
  npm i pg

• configure database

  • add ormconfig.json
  • most of the time you'll only need to configure host, username, password, database and maybe port options.

{
  "type": "postgres",
  "host": "database-2.cravwavodaxd.ap-northeast-1.rds.amazonaws.com",
  "port": 5432,
  "username": "",
  "password": "",
  "database": "postgres",
  "synchronize": true,
  "logging": false,
  "entities": ["src/entity/**/*.ts"],
  "migrations": ["src/migration/**/*.ts"],
  "subscribers": ["src/subscriber/**/*.ts"]
}

initial git

git init

---

BONUS ESLint, Prettier and Husky

• install ESLint

npm i -D @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin @typescript-eslint/parser eslint eslint-config-standard eslint-plugin-import eslint-plugin-node eslint-plugin-promise eslint-plugin-standard

• configure ESLint
  • add .eslintrc.json

{
  "env": {
    "es2020": true,
    "node": true
  },
  "extends": ["standard"],
  "parser": "@typescript-eslint/parser",
  "parserOptions": {
    "ecmaVersion": 11,
    "sourceType": "module"
  },
  "plugins": ["@typescript-eslint"],
  "rules": { "space-before-function-paren": "off" }
}

• install Prettier

npm i -D --save-exact prettier

• configure Prettier
  • add .prettierrc.json

{
  "semi": false,
  "singleQuote": true,
  "arrowParens": "avoid",
  "printWidth": 120,
  "trailingComma": "none"
}

• install Husky and pretty-quick
  npm i -D husky pretty-quick

• configure Husky
  In package.json, add:

"husky": {
  "hooks": {
    "pre-commit": "pretty-quick --staged"
  }
}

• Timezone in PostgreSQL
  timestamptz note

MySQL doens't have timestamptz, also when you just type timestamp in MySQL, MySQL can get the right timezone.