Welcome to your go-to guide for setting up the Node.js Express Mongoose Demo Application! This demo showcases various features that are essential for modern web development, encapsulated in a functional blogging platform. Whether you’re a novice trying to dip your toes into web applications or an experienced guru looking for best practices, this guide has something for you.

Table of Contents

• Boilerplate
• Installation
• Testing
• Using Docker
• License

Boilerplate

If you’re looking to build something from scratch, you can use the boilerplate. Check out the apps that are built using this approach to get further inspiration. Additionally, the wiki contains valuable information about the setup process, which is currently a work in progress.

Installation

To get started with your application, follow these installation steps:

git clone git@github.com:madhums/node-express-mongoose-demo.git
npm install
cp .env.example .env
npm start

Once you have the application running, visit http://localhost:3000 in your web browser.

NOTE: Make sure to provide your Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and GitHub CLIENT_IDs and SECRETs. For local development, you can add these details into the .env file. However, for production environments, it is unsafe to store sensitive data in files. Thus, you must set these values via command line. If using Heroku, check how to set environment variables here.

Testing

To run the tests for your application, simply execute:

npm test

Using Docker

For those of you who prefer Docker for development, here are the essential commands to get started:

npm install
cp .env.example .env
docker-compose up -d
docker-compose logs -f

After that, should you want to install an npm module during development, follow this sequence:

npm i [module_name]
docker-compose exec node npm i

If you make any changes to your files, nodemon will restart automatically within your Docker container, which can be observed in the logs.

To run tests using Docker, execute:

docker-compose exec -e MONGODB_URL=mongodb:mongo:27017/noobjs_test node npm test

This command will override the existing environment variable to prevent data loss during tests.

Note the difference between exec and run: exec runs the command in a running container, while run will create a new container to execute an isolated command. If you prefer to run tests without bringing up the Docker composition, simply use:

docker-compose run -e MONGODB_URL=mongodb:mongo:27017/noobjs_test node npm test

License

This application is licensed under the MIT License.

Troubleshooting

While following this guide, you might encounter some bumps along the road. Here are common troubleshooting tips:

• Application Not Starting: Ensure that you’ve completed all installation steps correctly and that your environment variables are correctly set.
• Database Connection Issues: Make sure your MongoDB instance is running and accessible.
• Docker Issues: Confirm that Docker is running on your machine and that your Docker-compose.yml file is correctly configured.

If the problem persists, consider checking relevant log files or documentation.

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