Node + TypeScript boilerplate

This boilerplate repo pulls together a demo of what I consider to be some of the current best practices for generic Node + Typescript development.

Highlights

• Node + TypeScript
  • Node strip types
  • TypeScript --erasableSyntaxOnly
• Containerized build
• Testing with vitest
  • Unit tests
  • Integration tests run against containerized build
• Zod env validation

Getting started

npm run dev recommended for feature development.

npm ci
npm run test:unit
npm run dev
npm run test:integration

Container

Containerized build provided for testing out more infrastructure dependent things like OTEL tracing.

podman compose up --build -d
npm run test:integration
podman compose down

Notes

• Type stripping is such a nice approach to TypeScript use. No more fiddling with sourcemaps or compiler build steps. Just npm ci and node src/main.ts.
• I was initially using node --watch for the dev script but I've gone back to nodemon because I kept running into an issue where node --watch would restart once or twice and then never trigger a restart again. Not sure what's up there but nodemon still works great even if it is a bit of a bummer to expand node_modules.
• I was initially using node --test and while I'm still excited for a potential future where I can avoid yet more dependencies in node_modules, tools like vitest Just Work TM and imo are nicer to use day to day.

TODO

• Set up CI
  • Formatter check
  • Type check
  • Linter check
  • Unit tests
  • Build image
  • Integration tests against image
  • Publish image
• Make OTEL optional
  • Currently baked in as required when running the image but I want the flexibility of not turning on the instrumentation