node-express-ts-template

Express JS Application with Typescript with the following features:

• Express v5 app configured
• Handled loading of environment variables
• Preconfigured logger middleware - winston for logging request details and errors
• Docker image
• Run in production environment with pm2

Getting Started

sh setup.sh

The above command executes the setup.sh script to set up the project by:

• Ensuring pnpm, npm-check-updates and pm2 are installed globally.
• Installing all project dependencies.
• Building the app for the first time.

Run the app in development environment:

pnpm dev

Build the app and run production code:

pnpm prod

Update Dependencies

npm-check-updates is an excellent tool for detecting the latest versions of dependencies and updating them in your package.json. It simplifies the process of keeping your project up to date with the latest package versions.

Installation

The setup.sh script globally installs npm-check-updates.

To update packages while also understanding the impact of the changes, run:

pnpm check-updates

This groups updates by type (major, minor, patch), making it easier to assess potential risks before upgrading.

Update all dependencies && check build status after updating all packages:

pnpm install-updates && pnpm build

PM2

1. You can use either env_file to read variables from, declare env variables in this file itself or do both. PM2 will load all variables from env_file and override any of them with keys from env.

2. By default, pm2 start launches PM2 as a daemon process in the background. In a Docker environment, the container expects the main process to run in the foreground. If the main process exits Docker assumes the container has completed its task and shuts it down. Since PM2 detaches and runs in the background, Docker doesn't detect an active foreground process, leading to the container's immediate exit with code 0. ​

3. The pm2-runtime is designed specifically for Docker environments, keeping the process in the foreground and ensuring the container remains active.

4. If you enable the watch flag in ecosystem.config.js, make sure to also also add ignore_watch: ['logs'] in the config file as this will prevent PM2 from watching the logs directory, thereby avoiding restarts triggered by log file updates.