A complete guide to setup a nodejs backend server in just 5 minutes

Are you a professional developer or looking forward to starting your journey as a nodejs developer or someone like me who always keenly search for interesting articles and best practices to ship better production-level software then this article can be very much helpful for you.

Developing an app is but when it comes to maintaining a large codebase with more features, services, and users it becomes very difficult for us. Also, code optimization is a key term that we always focus on as a developer. This article will provide a clear overview of the best practices and guides which need to be maintained while developing a nodejs app.

Imagine the scenario when you were in preschool, with hardly 4-5 books you have to read now come to a situation when you are an engineering student like me and you have to deal with many heavy-weight books, practical assignments, lab files, reference books, and so many things and now if you don't know how to keep all of them in an organized way then I can guarantee that you will be in trouble when it comes to looking for a particular item. Similarly, maintain a proper folder structure while developing a nodejs app. For example, your app should contain folders like src, utils, config, tests, helpers, etc. look at the image below

Hiding secrets and API keys are one of the most important points you must remember. Building any production-ready app may use many APIs and tools and as a developer, it's your top priority to encrypt the keys else hackers can easily steal your data and private info. Use an env file and dotenv package to hide your keys.

Building a robust app make sure to use async await architecture and callback functions this helps your code to work as a first come first serve policy,i.e, only when a promise is resolved, is it gonna take an action.

Error handling and debugging your code is also one of the most toughest and important things you must remember as a developer So make sure to use error handling packages like joi and use a try-catch block in every function to handle errors and exceptions. Also while debugging an API we focus on the status codes to know about the request and errors so make sure to use proper status codes so that next time you won't get stuck while debugging an API.

A production-ready application will contain some extra added features like file upload, image professing, and kinds of stuff like that so make sure to add these features as a microservices and see the magic.

Containerizing makes your app run like an athlete by enhancing security features, cost optimization, cross-platform management, increasing scalability, and many more, so make sure to use tools Like docker azure container registry, etc. Also, check out this guide on containerizing the node js app using docker here

Once you are complete with development now it comes the time for testing and deployment to production use testing libraries like Mocha or Jest and after testing is over you get a green signal to make sure to configure your deployment scripts, build commands and most important configure your API keys for production purpose.

Congrads we have reached the end make sure to share this article with your peers and feel free to reach me out for any queries. Stay tuned for the next happy coding:).