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Step-by-step: Building a Node.js server (2021 edition) — Part 4/4 - Testing

If you want to use the server starter directly without going through the tutorial, find the code on Github. Link to the next parts are at the bottom of this page. In Part I to III we built a generic server with the help of Koa.js, GraphQL, MongoDB and Docker. Let’s add some tests with Mocha to make sure we don’t introduce regressions when we add more code. Requirements: Understanding why testing is important (😉). ...

November 29, 2020 · 6 min · Theo Penavaire
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Step-by-step: Building a Node.js server (2021 edition) — Part 3/4 - The API

If you want to use the server starter directly without going through the tutorial, find the code on Github. Link to the next parts are at the bottom of this page. In Part I and II we didn’t write much code. Time to write some boilerplate code, and to make our first queries to the MongoDB database through the GraphQL API. There’s no easy way to proceed step by step with this chapter, but everything will make sense at the end. ...

November 29, 2020 · 8 min · Theo Penavaire
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Step-by-step: Building a Node.js server (2021 edition) — Part 2/4 - Docker

If you want to use the server starter directly without going through the tutorial, find the code on Github. Link to the next parts are at the bottom of this page. In Part I we built a basic Koa.js server with Typescript and improved our workflows with some tooling. The next step would be to set up a database to store and retrieve data. We will use MongoDB, a NoSQL database. But we’d like to have a single and simple way to install it on each developer’s machine instead of relying on tedious manual configuration. We’d also like to make the installation process deterministic, with configuration stored in files instead of set by the OS itself (environment variables). ...

November 29, 2020 · 8 min · Theo Penavaire
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Step-by-step: Building a Node.js server (2021 edition) — Part 1/4

If you want to use the server starter directly without going through the tutorial, find the code on Github. Link to the next parts are at the bottom of this page. I recently needed to build a server for a side project. Building the foundation to provide generic features any server is expected to deliver ended up being a new side project by itself! Today there are many great tools to build a robust and versatile back-end, and plenty documentation available. However it is hard to find tutorials for building a generic back-end, with very little configuration needed to adapt it to any business application. It is also hard to find info about grouping all the different tools and frameworks needed together. This tutorial is nothing more than a summary of all the tribal knowledge spread out there. ...

November 29, 2020 · 8 min · Theo Penavaire