🚀 Express MVC Starter

Express.js starter boilerplate with MVC architecture

📝 Introduction

A professional Express.js starter boilerplate designed for scalable and production-ready Node.js applications. It provides a clean MVC structure, multiple database templates, validation options, developer tooling, and deployment support.

📦 Features

✅ Express.js – Fast, minimalist web framework
✅ MVC Architecture – Clean separation of Models, Views, Controllers
✅ Multiple Database Templates – MySQL, PostgreSQL, Mongoose (MongoDB), Sequelize
✅ Validators – Joi or express-validator (configurable)
✅ Environment Config – dotenv-based configuration
✅ Security – Helmet, CORS, Rate Limiting
✅ Logging – Centralized logger with levels & transports
✅ File Uploads – Multer integration
✅ Mail Service – Nodemailer support
✅ API Documentation – Swagger (OpenAPI)
✅ Testing – Jest setup out of the box
✅ Linting & Formatting – ESLint & Prettier
✅ Process Management – PM2 for production
✅ Hot Reloading – nodemon for development

🧩 Templates

You can choose a database template during project creation:

• MySQL – Traditional relational database setup
• PostgreSQL – Advanced relational database with strong consistency
• Mongoose – MongoDB ODM for NoSQL applications
• Sequelize – ORM supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and more

Language support:

• JavaScript (default)
• TypeScript (recommended for large & scalable projects)

🧪 Validators

Validation can be enabled during setup (fully supported in JavaScript & TypeScript):

• Joi – Schema-based request validation
• express-validator – Middleware-based validation for Express routes

🛠 Tools Included

• ESLint & Prettier – Code quality and formatting
• Nodemailer – Email sending utility
• Multer – File upload handling
• Jest – Unit and integration testing
• Swagger – API documentation and testing UI
• PM2 – Production process manager
• nodemon – Auto-restart server during development

⚙️ Installation

Create a new project using NPX or NPM:

npx create-new-express-project <project-name>
# or
npm create new-express-project <project-name>

👍 Help

Usage: create-new-express-project <project-name> [options]

CLI to create Express app in MVC pattern

Options:
  -V, --version    output the version number
  -m, --mongoose   Setup Mongoose
  -M, --mysql      Setup MySQL
  -p, --postgres   Setup Postgres
  -S, --sequelize  Setup Sequelize
  -h, --help       display help for command

📋 Interactive Prompts

✔ Preferred language: JavaScript
✔ Select Template: MySQL / PostgreSQL / Mongoose / Sequelize
✔ Choose Validator: Joi / express-validator
✔ Select Tools: Linting / Testing / Swagger / Deployment

After setup:

cd <project-name>
npm install
npm run dev

🔧 Environment Configuration

Create a .env file in the root directory:

APP_PORT=3000
NODE_ENV=development

# Database configuration
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=3306
DB_NAME=app_db
DB_USER=root
DB_PASSWORD=secret

# Mail configuration
MAIL_HOST=smtp.example.com
MAIL_PORT=587
[email protected]
MAIL_PASSWORD=your_password

🚦 Running the Application

# Development mode (nodemon)
npm run dev

# Production mode
npm start

# Run tests
npm run test

Server will start at: 👉 http://localhost:3000

📜 NPM Scripts

| Command | Description | | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | | npm run dev | Start with nodemon | | npm start | Run app in production | | npm run build | Compile TypeScript to JavaScript |

ESLint & Prettier

| Command | Description | | ----------------------- | ------------------------------------- | | npm run lint | Run ESLint to check code quality | | npm run lint:fix | Automatically fix ESLint issues | | npm run format | Check code formatting using Prettier | | npm run format:fix | Format code using Prettier |

Testing

| Command | Description | | ----------------------- | ------------------------------------- | | npm run test | Run unit tests with Jest | | npm run test:coverage | Run tests with coverage reports |

Database Migrations (Sequelize)

| Command | Description | | --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | | npm run db:migrate | Create database tables based on model files | | npm run db:refresh | Drop all tables and recreate from model files | | npm run db:seed | Populate database with seed data |

Deployment (PM2)

| Command | Description | | ----------------------- | ------------------------------------- | | npm run pm2:start | Start application with PM2 | | npm run pm2:restart | Restart PM2 process | | npm run pm2:stop | Stop PM2 process |

📖 API Documentation

Swagger UI is available at: 👉 http://localhost:3000/api-docs

🗂 Folder Structure

my-express-app/
│
├── src/
│   ├── config/          # App, database, and environment configs
│   ├── controllers/     # Request handlers (business logic)
│   ├── models/          # Database models / schemas
│   ├── repositories/    # Database query layer
│   ├── routes/          # API route definitions
│   ├── middlewares/     # Custom Express middlewares
│   ├── validators/      # Joi / express-validator schemas
│   ├── services/        # Reusable services (mail, file upload, etc.)
│   ├── utils/           # Helper utilities (logger, constants)
│   ├── public/          # Static assets
│   ├── tests/           # Unit & integration tests
│   ├── views/           # View templates (if enabled)
│   ├── app.js           # Express app entry
│   └── server.js        # Application bootstrap
│
├── uploads/             # Uploaded files (multer)
├── swagger.yaml         # Swagger API documentation
├── ecosystem.config.js  # PM2 configuration
├── .env.example         # Environment variable sample
└── package.json

🧰 Tech Stack

• Node.js
• Express.js
• MySQL / PostgreSQL / MongoDB
• Sequelize / Mongoose
• Joi / express-validator
• Multer
• Nodemailer
• Swagger (OpenAPI)
• Jest
• PM2

🧾 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License – free to use and modify.

🌟 Contributing

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome! Feel free to open a pull request.

💡 Author

Karthikeyan M 👨‍💻 GitHub