An MVC Generator for Your Next Express JS Project

Kenas Zogara — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 11:35:43 +0000

I'm tired of writing boilerplate codes for an MVC design pattern in my Express project. So I decided to create a generator for it. 🚀🚀

The package for this tool, I named it VYNL, it is published in npm and you can start using it in your project.

$ npm install vynl

Create an empty express project, then type in

$ npx vynl init

What it does for you, is simple, it makes out your project directory like so:

.
|--auth
|    └──auth.js
|--config
|    └──config.json
|--docs
|    |--paths
|    |    |--index.js
|    |    └──users.js
|    └──schemas
|         |--index.js
|         └──users.js
|--migrations
|--models
|--routes
|--app.js
└──swagger.js

It also creates these things out of the box for you:

A Users MVC (with Sequelize Model)
Basic authentication using jsonwebtoken
Swagger Documentation for the API routes.

Next, Adjust your project database configuration in config/config.json

Since the generator will only write codes for you, You are still required to install the packages needed to run the project yourself.

$ npm install sequelize jsonwebtoken swagger-ui-express mysql2

if you are using other database than mysql, check here

Then to generate a new MVC simply use:

$ npx vynl generate:api -m <model_name> -f <model_fields>

model_fields syntax: : and comma separated for the next field. Ex. name:string,birth_date:string,email:string,password:string

It also allows you to only generate a part of the MVC (ex. only the Model).

Generate Model

$ npx vynl generate:model -m <model_name> -f <model_fields>

Generate Controller

$ npx vynl generate:controller -m <model_name>

Generate Route

$ npx vynl generate:route -r <route_name>

Generate Swagger Doc

$ npx vynl generate:swagger -m <model_name> -f <model_fields>

And that's it. I hope this tool can help you in your next Express project.

Cheers 🍷

DEV Community: Kenas Zogara

An MVC Generator for Your Next Express JS Project