Project Structure

Once you’ve generated your NodeJS server project with Composer you’ll want to familiarize yourself with its structure.

The majority of the important bits are in the src folder. So let’s focus on that first.

src/jobs

The jobs folder contains TypeScript classes that provide background services that run at a scheduled interval. Each Composer project comes with one default background job called the MetricsCollector. The server will automatically pick up any class within this folder and load it as a background job on startup.

src/models

At startup the server will automatically scan and load all files defined in this folder as data model definitions. Each data model class must be decorated with Composer and TypeORM decorators as Composer uses the TypeORM system to manage storage of all data model objects. Composer will have automatically generated all data models defined in the OpenAPI specification as schemas, adding the desired decorators that were specified in the OpenAPI file.

Each generated model class also features a constructor that takes a single object as its sole argument. This serves as a simple copy constructor which enforces the desired structure of the data model, throwing away any additional undesired data that is passed to it.

src/routes

The routes folder is where most of the magic happens. Each file in this folder is automatically loaded by the server at startup as well. Each file corresponds to one or more Path Item objects in the OpenAPI specification file. When the x-schema field is used for a Path Item, then all corresponding path items associated with a given data model are grouped into one class named <Schema>Route.ts. If the x-name was used then all corresponding path items that specified the same name are grouped into a single class named <Name>Route.ts.

src/config.ts

The config.ts file is where all the global application configuration is stored. This contains everything from the background jobs to the datastores and JWT authentication information. The server leverages the nconf configuration system to make defining and accessing configuration variables simple. The resulting config object is automatically injected into each Route class via the @Config decorator.

src/server.ts

The server.ts file is the entry point of the server and is the first script run. It contains simple and common functionality needed to initialize the global configuration, system logger, background service manager and the Composer Server itself.

test

The test folder contains all unit tests for the project. Composer is pre-configured to use the jest unit test framework. Composer automatically generates unit test files for each file in the src/routes folder. However, these tests are not complete and must be modified.