Boilerplate Code for Starting a Node.js Server with Express and MongoDB

Node.js is a popular runtime environment for building server-side applications, and Express is a popular framework for building APIs and web applications on top of Node.js. In this article, we’ll review the steps for setting up a boilerplate codebase for a Node.js server using Express and MongoDB with the Mongoose ODM (Object Document Mapper).

Step 1: Create a new Node.js project

First, create a new directory for your project and initialize it as a Node.js project by running the following commands:

mkdir my-server
cd
 my-server
npm init -y

The npm init command will create a package.json file for your project, storing your project’s dependencies and scripts.

Step 2: Install dependencies

Next, we’ll install the required dependencies for our server. We’ll use Express as our server framework and Mongoose as our ODM for connecting to MongoDB. Run the following command to install these dependencies:

npm install express mongoose

Step 3: Set up the server

Now, let’s set up the basic structure for our server. Create a new file called server.js in the root of your project directory and add the following code:

const
 express = 
require
(
'express'
);
const
 mongoose = 
require
(
'mongoose'
);

const
 app = express();

 
mongoose.connect(process.env.MONGODB_URI || 
'mongodb://localhost/my-database'
, {
  
useNewUrlParser
: 
true
,
  
useUnifiedTopology
: 
true
});

 
app.use(express.json());

 
app.get(
'/'
, 
(
req, res
) => {
  res.send(
'Hello, world!'
);
});

 
const
 port = process.env.PORT || 
5000
;
app.listen(port, 
() =>
 {
  
console
.log(
`Server listening on port 
${port}
`);
});

This code sets up a basic Express server that listens for HTTP requests on port 5000 (or the port specified in the PORT environment variable, if it exists). It also connects to a MongoDB database using Mongoose and sets up middleware for parsing JSON requests. Finally, it sets up a simple route for the root path that sends a response with the text “Hello, world!”.

Step 4: Start the server

To start the server, run the following command in your terminal:

node server.js

You should see the message “Server listening on port 5000” in your terminal, indicating that the server has started successfully.

Step 5: Test the server

To test the server, open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:5000. You should see the text “Hello, world!” displayed on the page.

Conclusion

This is a simple example of how to set up a boilerplate Node.js server using Express and MongoDB with Mongoose