Express Simpleton

A convention based express framework.

The directory structure

configs
    vars
middlewares
public
views
assets.json
routes.json
startup.js
waitFor.js

Usage

A minimal index.js example (express and the app are passed in to give you more control)

var simpleton = require('express-simpleton'),
    express = require('express'),
    app = express();
    
// Start the express app based on the files available in the base directory.
simpleton
    .start({
        baseDirectory   : __dirname
    })
    .then(function(configs) {
        console.log('app started with:', configs);
    })
    .catch(function(error) {
        console.log('there was an error:', error);
    });

Other options:

options.express - express, if not provided, will be created for you options.app - the express app, if not provided, will be created for you options.verbose - more output as app starts up.

Directories

Configs

Any point after startup.js is called, configs are available synchronously as, require('express-simpleton').configs(). In addition to the built aspects, configs.env, configs.app, and configs.express are available.

The configs are dynamically built based on node.process.NODE_ENV. Each json file in configs is an underscore template that gets passed vars/[NODE_ENV].json. The resulting json gets extended onto the configs object.

The configs object is available as require('express-singleton').configs() after the start() call.

express and app are attached to the configs object as .express and .app.

Important configs:

{
    "port" : "// The port number the express app should listen on"
}

Middlewares

routes.json will look for available middlewares here.

Public

This directory will be served as static content

Views

Jade templates

Files (in base directory)

• assets.json
• routes.json
• waitFor.js - file gets called immediately before calling app.listen. listen is not called until this is resolved
• startup.js - file gets called immediately after configs are built. so if you need to do things before the static middleware is added (e.g. node sass) do it here. callback to run immediately after configs are assembled - configs passed in as frist argument, if a promise is returned will not continue until the promise is resolved. app and express are passed in for convenience as the second and third arguments:

// startup.js
module.exports = function(configs, app, express) {
    if (configs.optimize) {
        app.enable('etag');
        app.use(function (req, res, next) {
            res.setHeader('Cache-Control', 'private, max-age=' + (365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000));
            next();
        });
    }
}

Notes

The optimized dir and baseDir/tmp should be gitignored.