After you generate your project, these commands are available in package.json.

npm test # test using Jest
npm run coverage # test and open the coverage report in the browser
npm run lint # lint using ESLint
npm run dev # run the API in development mode
npm run prod # run the API in production mode
npm run docs # generate API docs

First, you will need to install and run MongoDB in another terminal instance.

$ mongod

Then, run the server in development mode.

$ npm run dev
Express server listening on http://0.0.0.0:9000, in development mode

If you choose to generate the authentication API, you can start to play with it.

Note that creating and authenticating users needs a master key (which is defined in the .env file)

Create a user (sign up):

curl -X POST http://0.0.0.0:9000/users -i -d "email=test@example.com&password=123456&access_token=MASTER_KEY_HERE"

It will return something like:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
...
{
  "id": "57d8160eabfa186c7887a8d3",
  "name": "test",
  "picture":"https://gravatar.com/avatar/55502f40dc8b7c769880b10874abc9d0?d=identicon",
  "email": "test@example.com",
  "createdAt": "2016-09-13T15:06:54.633Z"
}

Authenticate the user (sign in):

curl -X POST http://0.0.0.0:9000/auth -i -u test@example.com:123456 -d "access_token=MASTER_KEY_HERE"

It will return something like:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
...
{
  "token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9",
  "user": {
    "id": "57d8160eabfa186c7887a8d3",
    "name": "test",
    "picture": "https://gravatar.com/avatar/55502f40dc8b7c769880b10874abc9d0?d=identicon",
    "email": "test@example.com",
    "createdAt":"2016-09-13T15:06:54.633Z"
  }
}

Now you can use the eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9 token (it's usually greater than this) to call user protected APIs. For example, you can create a new article API using yo rest:api and make the POST /articles endpoint only accessible to authenticated users. Then, to create a new article you must pass the access_token parameter.

curl -X POST http://0.0.0.0:9000/articles -i -d "title=Awesome Article&content=Yeah Baby&access_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9"

It will return something like:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
...
{
  "id": "57d819bfabfa186c7887a8d6",
  "title": "Awesome Article",
  "content": "Yeah Baby",
  "createdAt": "2016-09-13T15:22:39.846Z",
  "updatedAt":"2016-09-13T15:22:39.846Z"
}

Some endpoints are only accessible by admin users. To create an admin user, just pass the role=admin along to other data when calling POST /users.

You can customize the src and api directories.

src/
├─ api/
│  ├─ user/
│  │  ├─ controller.js
│  │  ├─ index.js
│  │  ├─ index.test.js
│  │  ├─ model.js
│  │  └─ model.test.js
│  └─ index.js
├─ services/
│  ├─ express/
│  ├─ facebook/
│  ├─ mongoose/
│  ├─ passport/
│  ├─ sendgrid/
│  └─ your-service/
├─ app.js
├─ config.js
└─ index.js

Here is where the API endpoints are defined. Each API has its own folder.

It defines the Mongoose schema and model for the API endpoint. Any changes to the data model should be done here.

This is the API controller file. It defines the main router middlewares which use the API model.

This is the entry file of the API. It defines the routes using, along other middlewares (like session, validation etc.), the middlewares defined in the some-endpoint.controller.js file.

Here you can put helpers, libraries and other types of modules which you want to use in your APIs.