18 Free Open-source Node.js and Express Starters To Boost Your Project Time
Node.js and Express boilerplate starter templates are pre-configured code templates or projects that provide a foundation for building Node.js and Express applications. These templates are designed to help developers kickstart their projects by providing a basic structure, essential dependencies, and common configurations.
Boilerplate starter templates can be beneficial as they save time and effort in setting up a new Node.js and Express project from scratch. They often include features like routing, middleware, error handling, database integration, authentication, and more. By using these templates, developers can focus on implementing their specific application logic rather than spending time on repetitive setup tasks.
These starter templates are usually customizable, allowing developers to add or remove functionalities according to their project requirements. They can serve as a starting point for various types of web applications, ranging from simple prototypes to complex, production-ready systems.
In addition to the core Node.js and Express modules, boilerplate starter templates often leverage popular npm packages and frameworks to enhance development productivity and maintainability. Examples include database libraries like Mongoose or Sequelize, authentication libraries like Passport, and front-end frameworks like React or Vue.js.
Using Node.js and Express boilerplate starter templates can be a great way to accelerate the development process, ensure best practices, and promote code consistency across projects. They provide a solid foundation for building robust and scalable web applications while allowing developers to focus on their specific business logic.
1- Graphile SaaS Starter for Next.js
This is an open-source opinionated SaaS quick-start with pre-built user account and organization system for full-stack application development in React, Node.js, GraphQL and PostgreSQL. Powered by PostGraphile, TypeScript, Apollo Client, Graphile Worker, Graphile Migrate, GraphQL Code Generator, Ant Design and Next.js
2- Express Starter Kit
A powerful foundation for creating web applications using Express. ⚠️ Please note that this project is currently in active development and is not recommended for production use at this time. Rest assured, this template will continually be updated as the project evolves and I gain insights from various industry best practices. It is an actively maintained fork of the implementations by Sanket Singh's repository.
Features
- No configuration. Start developing instantly.
- No lock-in. Easily migrate to other tools and frameworks.
- No boilerplate. Start with a blank canvas with just bare minimum code to setup the server.
- No bloat. Only the bare minimum dependencies to get you started.
- No black box. Understand every line of code and customize it to your needs.
- No legacy. Uses the latest version of Express and Node.js.
3- Node.js API Starter Kit
Node.js API Starter Kit is a project template for building Node.js backend applications optimized for serverless infrastructure such as Google Cloud Functions, AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, etc. Use it as an API server for your front-end app.
Features
- Database first design; auto-generated strongly typed data models (TypeScript)
- Authentication and authorization using OAuth 2.0 providers (Google, Facebook, GitHub, etc.)
- Stateless sessions implemented with JWT tokens and a session cookie (compatible with SSR)
- GraphQL API example, implemented using the code-first development approach
- Database schema migration, seeds, and REPL shell tooling
- Transactional emails using Handlebars templates and instant email previews
- Structured logs and error reporting to Google StackDriver
- Pre-configured unit testing tooling powered by Jest and Supertest
- Application bundling with Rollup as an optimization technique for serverless deployments
- Rebuilds and restarts the app on changes when running locally
- Pre-configured for
local
,dev
,test
, andprod
environments
4- Nodejs API Server
Express/Nodejs Starter with JWT Authentication
, OAuth (Github), and SQLite persistence - Provided by AppSeed
. Authentication Flow uses json web tokens
via Passport library - passport-jwt
strategy.
It also includes a React Soft Dashboard, SQLite, and Passport support.
5- Node TypeScript Starter
This is an open-source template to get you started with TypeScript, Node.js & Express with MongoDB as the backend for the REST API.
6- Nodejs Starter (MongoDB)
Node.js Starter is a boilerplate for Node.js web applications built with:
- MongoDB - A document-oriented, No-SQL database used to store the application data.
- ExpressJS - fast node.js network app framework.
- nodeJS - A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine
- Authentication with jsonwebtoken
7- Boilerplate for Node.js App
This is an open-source productivity-firstboilerplate for Node.js web applications.
Features
- Login
- Local Authentication using Email and Password
- OAuth 2.0 Authentication: Sign in with Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitch, Github, Snapchat
- User Profile and Account Management
- Gravatar
- Profile Details
- Change Password
- Forgot Password
- Reset Password
- Verify Email
- Link multiple OAuth strategies to one account
- Delete Account
- Contact Form (powered by SMTP via Sendgrid, Mailgun, AWS SES, etc.)
- File upload
- API Examples
- Facebook, Foursquare, Tumblr, Pinterest, GitHub, Steam, Quickbooks, Paypal, Stripe, Twilio (text messaging), Lob (USPS Mail), HERE Maps, Google Maps, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Alpha Vantage (stocks and finance info) with ChartJS, Last.fm, New York Times, Web Scraping,
- Flash notifications
- reCaPTCHA and rate limit protection
- CSRF protection
- MVC Project Structure
- Node.js clusters support
- HTTPS Proxy support (via ngrok, Cloudflare, etc.)
- SASS stylesheets (auto-compiled via middleware)
- Bootstrap 5
- "Go to production" checklist
8- Node.js Starter (SPA)
Single Page App setup using industry's best practices and modules. Node.js, Express, Mongoose, passport.js, component.io, Jade, Stylus and Bootstrap.
9- TypeScript Node Starter
The main purpose of this repository is to show a working Node.js API Server + front-end project and workflow for writing Node code in TypeScript.
10- Serverless Node.js Starter
A Serverless starter that adds ES6, TypeScript, serverless-offline, linting, environment variables, and unit test support. Part of the Serverless Stack guide.
Serverless Node.js Starter uses the serverless-bundle plugin and the serverless-offline plugin. It supports:
- Generating optimized Lambda packages with Webpack
- Using ES6 or TypeScript in your handler functions
- Run API Gateway locally
- Use
serverless offline start
- Use
- Support for unit tests
- Run
npm test
to run your tests
- Run
- Sourcemaps for proper error messages
- Error message show the correct line numbers
- Works in production with CloudWatch
- Lint your code with ESLint
- Add environment variables for your stages
- No need to manage Webpack or Babel configs
11- Express API Starter
A basic starter for an express.js API.
12- RESTful API Node Server Boilerplate
A boilerplate/starter project for quickly building RESTful APIs using Node.js, Express, and Mongoose.
By running a single command, you will get a production-ready Node.js app installed and fully configured on your machine. The app comes with many built-in features, such as authentication using JWT, request validation, unit and integration tests, continuous integration, docker support, API documentation, pagination, etc. For more details, check the features list below.
F
- NoSQL database: MongoDB object data modeling using Mongoose
- Authentication and authorization: using passport
- Validation: request data validation using Joi
- Logging: using winston and morgan
- Testing: unit and integration tests using Jest
- Error handling: centralized error handling mechanism
- API documentation: with swagger-jsdoc and swagger-ui-express
- Process management: advanced production process management using PM2
- Dependency management: with Yarn
- Environment variables: using dotenv and cross-env
- Security: set security HTTP headers using helmet
- Santizing: sanitize request data against xss and query injection
- CORS: Cross-Origin Resource-Sharing enabled using cors
- Compression: gzip compression with compression
- CI: continuous integration with Travis CI
- Docker support
- Code coverage: using coveralls
- Code quality: with Codacy
- Git hooks: with husky and lint-staged
- Linting: with ESLint and Prettier
- Editor config: consistent editor configuration using EditorConfig
13- TypeORM / Express / TypeScript RESTful API boilerplate
💊 Minimal Express RESTful API boilerplate. Spin it up with single command. TypeScript, TypeORM, Postgres and Docker with focus on best practices and painless developer experience.
Features
- Minimal setup that can be extended 🔧
- Spin it up with single command 🌀
- TypeScript first
- RESTful APIs
- JWT authentication with role based authorization
14- Node.js API Boilerplate
Yet another Node.js API Boilerplate.
Features
- Modular RESTful API
- ES6 Classes
- Action based
- SQL based (PostgreSQL with objection.js)
- Migrations(knex.js)
- Auth (JWT/Access-token/Refresh-token)
- Cookie support
- Role based access control
- Request validation
- CRUD(users, posts resources)
- Automated API documentation
- Full authentication/authorization and user registration flow implemented
- Tests(e2e)
15- Express Starter
🚀 A boilerplate for Node.js api projects with Express.js, Sequelize, PostgreSQL and ES6+.
Features
- ES6+ features with babel (including es6 import/export feature).
- SQL database implementation with Sequelize v6 for postgres dialect (you can change postgresql anytime).
- Compatible with 12 factor app.
- Including authentication system with rest api endpoints.
- Linting with eslint (airbnb config).
- Implemented nodemailer. If you are in development or test mode, you use test smtp account. In production mode, you use real smtp server. For more info, browse
src/helpers/mail.js
file. - Production ready Dockerfile.
- Test cases written with mocha and chai.
- Implemented sentry error tracking.
- Api documentation with swagger.
- Records are never deleted from the database. They are marked as deleted.
- Cache management with redis.
- One click deploy to Google Cloud Run.
16- Node.js TypeScript Template with Express and MongoDB
This is a TypeScript template for a Node.js project using the Express framework and MongoDB as the database. The template contains the following features:
- Routes management with versioning and role-based route access.
- Passport JWT role-based authentication.
- MVC architecture with separate folders and code for routes, models, services, and middlewares.
- Session management with JWT token.
- API rate limit.
- Generic response management i.e. error and success responses.
- Env management with validation.
- Full TypeScript support.
- Code validation with tests. Tests are written using chai.
The project includes code for user login, signup, logout, creating, updating, and deleting tweets with user feed management.
17- Node JWT
This is an open-source NodeJS and ExpressJS starter kit with jwt authentication integrated.
18- Express Typescript Starter
Node.js and Express Boilerplates Starter Templates provide a faster way to build a Node.js RESTful API in TypeScript. Features include beautiful code with library annotations, dependency injection with TypeDI, simplified database query with TypeORM, clear structure with different layers, easy exception handling with routing-controllers, and smart validation with class-validator.
More Features
- Beautiful Code thanks to the awesome annotations of the libraries from pleerock.
- Dependency Injection done with the nice framework from TypeDI.
- Simplified Database Query with the ORM TypeORM.
- Clear Structure with different layers such as controllers, services, repositories, models, middlewares...
- Easy Exception Handling thanks to routing-controllers.
- Smart Validation thanks to class-validator with some nice annotations.
- Custom Validators to validate your request even better and stricter (custom-validation-classes).
- Basic Security Features thanks to Helmet.
- Authentication and Authorization thanks to jsonwebtoken.
- CLI Commands thanks to yargs.
- Easy event dispatching thanks to event-dispatch.
- Fast Database Building with simple migration from TypeORM.
- Easy Data Seeding with our own factories.
- Auth System thanks to jsonwebtoken.
- Docker thanks to docker.
- Class-based to handle websocket events thanks to socket-controllers.
- Class-based to handle Cron Jobs thanks to cron-decorators.
- API Documentation thanks to swagger and routing-controllers-openapi.
- GraphQL thanks to TypeGraphQL we have a some cool decorators to simplify the usage of GraphQL.
- Queue Jobs thanks to BullMQ.
- Query Parser thanks to Typeorm Query Parser.