This is a simple boilerplate designed to serve as robust template for quickly starting development on a Typescript based MERN web application.

• Session based authentication with Passport
• Emailing for account verification and resetting password with SendGrid
• Admin functionality for viewing/deleting/promoting other users
• Clean authentication pages built with Material UI
• In memory database testing with Jest and Supertest
• AirBnb Typescript styling with Prettier and ESLint
• Husky and lint-staged for checking linting on commits
• GitHub Actions for ensuring linting + tests pass on pushes

These are necessary to build and run the project at full functionality

• Install Yarn Package Manager
• Install NodeJS

To take full advantage of the linting/formatting, recommend adding the Prettier and ESLint VSCode extensions and configuring them as shown here for code highlighting and formatting on save. Skip to the section labeled "Add the following to your VS Code settings.json". To access your settings.json, follow what is linked here. See here for the differences between the two tools and how they work together.

Finally, we also recommend downloading the Live Share extension by Microsoft for improved Collaboration. This allows for easy peer programming on one shared repository instance.

The boilerplate uses MongoDB as the database to store information for authentication. To have this available for use, do the following

• Create a MongoDB Atlas Account
• Create a database deployment (This should be done by your PM/TL)
• Get the database connection URI (Get from your PM/TL and add to .env)

Recommend downloading MongoDB Compass for easy viewing and management of data.

The boilerplate uses SendGrid to send emails to users in order to verify their account, and also to reset their passwords. To have email functionality available for use, the PM/TL should do the following

• Create a SendGrid Account
• Register a Sender Identity (Single Sender recommended for most)
• Create an [API Key](https://docs.sendgrid.com/ui/account-and-settings/api-keys#creating-an-api-key

Create a file named .env in the root of the server folder and add the following variables with the appropriate values. PM/TLs should provide this to their developers.

ATLAS_URI=mongodb-connection-uri-from-above
COOKIE_SECRET=any-string
SENDGRID_API_KEY=sendgrid-api-key-from-above
SENDGRID_EMAIL_ADDRESS=sendgrid-sender-identity-email-from-above

NOTE: Currently, this project is best supported by running CLI commands from a bash/zsh environment. If using Windows, this can be achieved by following what's done here.

From the root folder, run the following to configure the project and its dependencies

$ yarn setup

If there is any need to reset the dependencies, simply run the following series of commands

$ yarn clean
$ yarn setup

To run the project, use the following commands from the root folder

# run both server and client
$ yarn dev
# run server only
$ yarn server
# run client only
$ yarn client

To run all the tests in the project, run the following from the root folder

$ yarn test

To check for linting issues from ESLint and fix what's possible, from the root folder run the following

$ yarn lint

To format the code appropriately with Prettier (don't need this if format on save was setup in VSCode), from the root folder run the following

$ yarn format

Fill in with problem scenario + solution as they arise

If you see an error message similar to this one:

The engine "node" is incompatible with this module. Expected version ">=12.0.0". Got "11.15.0"

This means you are using the wrong node version. This boilerplate relies on using node version 14.8. If you are using any other version of node, please use nvm to set node version to 14.8.3 as referenced here.