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Folder Structure for NodeJS & ExpressJS project

Vaibhav Mehta on October 31, 2022

Prelude I've worked over several backend technologies, starting from PHP, then moving to RoR before getting my hands on NodeJS. I love h...
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Sergey Khomushin

I think it's not a secret for anyone that express.js is a dead project. Gets some packages updated every half of the year, and it hasn't changed in 5 years.
Outdated, and slow, with a whole bunch of legacy code supporting very old node versions. Why do you need It?

I highly recommend not making a monolith when your client side and server side are together in the same project. Create two projects and use the API.

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Akshay Patil

I disagree that express is dead. Are you even up with the latest frameworks like NestJS, NextJS etc.. which have over a million downloads a week on npm registry? They all use express under the hood. Just because you’re not using it directly doesn’t mean it is dead. There are 65k dependent packages as we speak.

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Akshay Patil

Lol Okay!

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Vaibhav Mehta

How is Expresssjs a dead project? They have been pushing out updates regularly.

Secondly I've stated that the above could be used as a website and as a standalone project if it's API only. The only thing you need to do is get rid of public and src like folders which are not relevant. Rest stays pretty much the same.

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Sergey Khomushin

4.17.1 - May 26, 2019
4.17.2 - Dec 17, 2021
4.17.3 - Feb 17, 2022
4.18.0 - Apr 25, 2022
4.18.2 - 24 days ago

Incredibly regular updates for 4 years, you're right. 90% of new "features" with the prefix "deps". The remaining 10% are minor issues. But I do not dissuade you, use what is convenient for you. Some people still use jQuery and are quite happy with it.

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Vaibhav Mehta

Some people still use jQuery and are quite happy with it.

What's wrong with jquery either? Not everything requires react or angular.

Express is pretty stable in its current state. I would rather see it as a framework which is matured enough that need not have to be updated as frequently as it doesn't break.

Look at the issues they have closed over the time, so what makes you think it isn't maintained? I am not against using something new or latest but a lot of devs these days want to use latest shiny frameworks without understanding the real use case.

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Vaibhav Mehta

Agree to your comment that we belong to different categories so our thoughts won't align so let's leave this discussion here.

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joedotnot

Nice answer, without even reading the article.

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Andre-John Mas

What do you recommend in its place and why? How is it no longer doing the job that people use it for?

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Elex

I find this very insightful. I don't really understand why people would keep suggesting and/or tell people to use a different library than the ones mentioned in this article, but I totally get that there are libraries that are better than the ones we use, but this focuses on the stuff that the majority of the developers/engineers use. I also do think this post is usually for those who want to learn and understand and gain different approaches and perspective from different people in terms of file architecture.

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José Pablo Ramírez Vargas

Stop using dotenv. Use wj-config. It is far better.

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subfuzion profile image
Tony Pujals • Edited

Not to be super critical, but you should probably disclose that you're the only contributor to wj-config, a project that's only a few months old, when you promote your own work. Telling someone to stop using something because your creation is "far better" as a single, isolated statement without justification, context, or evidence, is self-biased.

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José Pablo Ramírez Vargas

Yes, it is self-biased. I, however, would not invest time in trying to solve something that already has an acceptable solution. I come from the .Net environment where configuration is far more robust. When I had the need for configuration in the JavaScript realm it was a shock for me. I could not stand the current configuration solutions, so I made my own.

As far as being the only contributor or being a few months old, I don't see the relevance. The product can speak for itself, regardless of who made it, I would say.

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subfuzion profile image
Tony Pujals

It might not seem relevant to you as the author -- it's certainly relevant to everyone else in the community when you express authoritative (and biased, self-promoting) comments and tell somebody what to do (or stop doing), as you did. A bit of self-awareness as well as a little tact toward the author of the post you commented on is healthy, friend.

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José Pablo Ramírez Vargas

Ah, I see now what you meant. It is not about the capability of the package, it is about the social aspect of the sentence. I just wrote that quickly, as I do most comments, without a second thought.

I get it. I meant no disrespect towards the author. I simply volunteered an option without much second thought.

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Vaibhav Mehta

What problem does it solve in the above context as opposed to using dotENV?

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José Pablo Ramírez Vargas • Edited

It will allow you to consolidate your configuration into a single hierarchical calculated source as opposed to having to have multiple JS configuration files. It will support great flexibility regarding the source of your configuration, and on top of that, will keep your configuration much DRY'er.

Finally, as the cherry on top, if you are proxying or depending on other HTTP servers, wj-config will provide URL functions based on URL configuration data that can do route value replacement and dynamic query string addition. All replacements are URL encoded for you.

So, to answer your question, I'd say it solves problems you don't even know you have. Let me know if you are curious. I have a live demo in React @ CodeSandbox. Cheers.

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Vaibhav Mehta • Edited

Thank you for explaining. With due respect, no offence to your solution but I think dotENV would do a fair job here. I am aligned on what @subfuzion mentioned earlier, I had checked the details of the package before I asked you the question as well as your posts which were mostly on wj-config but I feel your package is not relevant to the article I've written.

That being said, I'll see if I could use it in some of the projects if needed :)

Thanks for the suggestion though.

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José Pablo Ramírez Vargas

No problem. To summarize on my intent, what I disliked due to my very own personal experience with dotenv and your proposed folder structure is the need to have independent configuration sources. If you split the configuration, you split the maintenance too.

Since dotenv is not hierarchical in nature, it makes it very difficult and cumbersome to keep maintaining projects with it, of course, when compared to more powerful configuration approaches like .Net Configuration. Since I was able to bring the power of .Net Configuration to the JavaScript world, I figured I dropped the link here.

If you were to use wj-config, you would quickly realize that your configuration folder would become simplified. That was the story behind the recommendation.

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NotFound404

Use aex instead of express

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Andre-John Mas

What problem is aex solving that express doesn’t? What now the only thing I can see it is pushing the use of decorators, which feels more like something a Java insisted on.

What’s your relationship to aex?

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NotFound404

Just take a look at:

github.com/calidion/aex

It has at lease the following advantages over express:

  1. Web Straight Line theory backed.
  2. Object Oriented support instead of callback functions only.
  3. Better Error support
  4. Ease way to separate your business code from web processing code
  5. Simple processing for web instead of writing repeating code again and again for getting body, query, params, and their data integrity.
  6. Simple way to retrieve files.
  7. Websocket support
  8. Separate data from web process with scope variable.

And 20% faster than express.

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Andre-John Mas • Edited

Are you the author of aex?

AEX is the only project that makes reference to “web straight line”, from what I can see. Also articles on it on medium don’t have any feedback, making me nervous about something that doesn’t have a proper discussion.

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NotFound404 • Edited

What is wrong if I am the author? So you determine things by medium not logic?

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ajmas profile image
Andre-John Mas • Edited

There is nothing wrong if you are the author, just that you aren’t being transparent that you are. It’s like recommending stocks, while not disclosing you are the owner of the business.

It helps us in deciding how objective an opinion is.

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NotFound404

So you don't recognize thing by your brain only by listening to others?

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NotFound404

Decorator is only a simple way to implement Web Straight Line.
Aex follows Web Straight Line instead of MVC which we think it is not suitable for web.

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JohnRamsey

It was interesting to read your article and learn something new. I myself now work in a company and do database management. I recently had a problem, I didn't know how to quickly sync data in MySQL. So, I came across this article about sync MySQL databases Where I found a detailed guide on how to do everything. Perhaps someone will also find it useful, so I'll leave it here.

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Somsubhra Das

test

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fruntend

Сongratulations 🥳! Your article hit the top posts for the week - dev.to/fruntend/top-10-posts-for-f...
Keep it up 👍