create-node-app

Create Node App

Create Node apps with no build configuration. Inspired by and based on create-react-app. In a single command, this tool lets you create an app which closely follows The Twelve Factors of web application development.

What's included?

create-node-app automatically sets up and manages:

• A complete web app with React and Express, deployable to any Kubernetes cluster
• Developer tools: ESLint, editorconfig, prettier, automatic reload
• Secure and optimized Dockerfile setup for easy containerized production deploys
  • Optional containerized development & testing is on the roadmap
• Production ready Kubernetes configurations for your app and its dependencies
• A metamodule system for easy development with services like PostgreSQL, Redis, and MySQL, all with no configuration
• Build, test, and deploy helpers

create-node-app has a simple core, with a small ecosystem of "meta-modules".

Meta-Modules

Meta-Modules are NPM Modules which contain:

• A validated and secure Node.js driver
• Metadata for configuring said driver (Environment Variables)
• A Docker Container Image which is validated to work properly with the chosen driver
• Metadata for configuring the service container

For example, the redis metamodule bundles the Node redis driver, a Redis 5 Docker image, and knows how to connect to Redis, without any configuration! Metamodules wrap some of the complexity of building microservices with Node.js, allowing you to rapidly iterate with the stack of your choice!

Explore modules here or help create them if the one you want doesn't exist!

Quick start

Create an app

npx create-node-app my-app

Checkout the readme for more details about building and deploying your app!

Add a meta-module

Add redis to our project:

npm install @nodeapp/redis

then

const redis = require('@nodeapp/redis')()

// This "just works" both in development and production!
redis.get('my-key', function(err, reply) {
  console.log(reply)
})

Run npm run start to begin development using Redis and Node!

Explore other meta-modules

Build, test and deploy:

npm build [environment]
npm test [environment]
npm deploy [environment]

Free App Hosting

This project is maintained by kubesail.com, which provides free-tier provides hosting. After creating an app, try npm run deploy to easily launch your app on a Kubernetes cluster with built-in load-balancing, HTTPS, and high-availability! KubeSail also offers the best way to iterate on Kubernetes resources - check us out!

Project Goals and Aspirations

While this project is usable as-is, we'd like to include the following features before considering this project "feature complete":

• git-crypt for secure encrypted app secrets (secrets as environment variables)
• Automatic set up of CI scaffolding (Jenkins, CircleCI)
• HTTPS (Letsencrypt, express boilerplate, HSTS, etc)
• Optional typing (Typescript & Flowtype)

Contributing

• If you feel that this tool can be improved in any way, feel free to open an issue or pull request!
• If you've created a metamodule you want us to include, please open an issue and let us know!
• We also value contributions on deploy-node-app which contains the bulk of the logic for creating and deploying development and production environments.