Create NodeJS project using expressJS & typescript

There is a no doubt that typescript is a life saver when it comes to large javascript project. Without being too much overwhelmed with lot of opinionated configuration, I thought I would publish a simple library which I have been using to bootstrap my nodeJS backend projects recently.

arnabk/create-express-typescript-app

So the first command to start your project is

npx create-express-typescript-app hello-world

Here is the folder structure generated by this tool

Let’s go over the folders

• / — The root folder contains all the necessary files to setup the project, including the typescript configurations. If you are a NodeJS developer, these files should be familiar to you.
• log — The project uses morgan dependency to log all access requests. It creates rolling file logger and a new file will be automatically generated everyday
• src — This is where you are going to put all your routes , utils , typings and any other ts and js files necessary for your project. To get started, sample routes and types are included in the template
• public — If you decide to use express server for your static file hosting, it comes configured and assumes that public folder is your static file location. You can create html , css and js files in this folder and it will be automatically available over http(s)

Available commands

• yarn start — To start a development project. It keeps watching for changes in src folder
• yarn build — Will generate compiled code. This command should be run before your project can serve in production. build folder is required for production commands to run successfully
• yarn prod-start — pm2 has been very reliable tool to manage production node instances. This project comes pre-configured with this tool. This command will start your project in non-blocking mode.
• yarn prod-stop <id> — This is the command to stop a running instance. You should pass <id> to this command that you received from the previous command to start the app server.

I hope this is useful for those who are trying to find how to use both express and typescript in their projects.