Backend Development

Getting Started

Refer to our main wiki page on the setup instructions.

Stack

Area	Choice	What is it
Language	TypeScript	Statically typed JavaScript
Backend Framework	Nest.js	A progressive Node.js framework for building efficient, reliable and scalable server-side applications.
ORM	Objection.js	An SQL-friendly ORM (Object Relation Mapping) for Node.js
SQL Query Builder	Knex.js	Build SQL queries for App logic and migrations
Database	PostgreSQL	Popular open source relational database

Testing

We currently have a rough set of end-to-end (e2e) tests for the backend:

• You can run them via yarn test:e2e --force-exit
• TODO: Let's aim to get our backend test coverage up with more comprehensive testing

Creating a new database migration file

• cd to the backend directory
• yarn migrate:make <migration-description>
• You can refer to the past migration files on how to write these migrations using Knex.js
• Run yarn migrate after completing the migration file.
• You might find these additional commands useful during development:
  • npx knex migrate:down: Undos the last migration that was run
  • npx knex migrate:up: Runs the next chronological migration that has yet to be run

Creating a new database seed file

• cd to the backend directory
• yarn seed:make <seed-file-name>
• You can refer to the past seed files on how to write these database seeds using Knex.js
• Run yarn seed after completing the seed file
  • WARNING: run this with caution as yarn seed will wipe your existing database table entries for the corresponding seeded tables