Node.js express.js MongoDB JWT REST API - Basic Project Skeleton

Getting started

This is a basic API REST skeleton for Cardano dApp authentication and authorization written on JavaScript using async/await. This backend utilizes the standard CIP-0008 signing spec. The project has all necessary endpoints for athentication, authorization and user management. The authentication token is generated as a JWT web token, therefore it can be shared easily by other services.

The authentication process is driven by signed payloads with the CIP-0030 Cardano dApp-wallet web bridge. There are three actions that require the user's wallet signature, Signup, Login and Reset. Once the payload with the desired action is signed with the correct private key, a JWT web token is issued and takes control of the session.

Frontend

This repository is self-contained and you can use ir and test it through the test suite and Postman. You can read more about the Postman examples in the usage section below. This is a good method for developing and debugging the code. But a front end is required to better understand how it works.

I've created another template for creating your web3 applications with ReactJS. You can clone it from the next repository jmagan/cardano-react-web3-skeleton.

Features

• Cardano CIP-0008 signing spec for the login and registration process.
• Multiple environment ready (development, production)
• Custom email/cardano address user system with basic security and blocking for preventing brute force attacks.
• Compressed responses.
• Secured HTTP headers.
• CORS ready.
• Cache ready (Redis).
• HTTP request logger in development mode.
• i18n ready (for sending emails in multiple languages).
• User roles.
• Pagination ready.
• User profile.
• Users list for admin area.
• Cities model and controller example.
• Login access log with IP, browser and country location (for country it looks for the header cf-ipcountry that CloudFlare creates when protecting your website).
• API autogenerated documentation by Postman.
• API collection example for Postman.
• Testing with mocha/chai for API endpoints.
• NPM scripts for cleaning and seeding the MongoDB database.
• NPM script for keeping good source code formatting using prettier and ESLint.
• Use of ESLint for good coding practices.
• Mailer example with Nodemailer and Mailgun.
• HTTPOnly refresh token cookie.
• Ability to refresh token.
• JWT Tokens, make requests with a token after login with Authorization header with value Bearer yourToken where yourToken is the signed and encrypted token given in the response from the login process.

Requirements

• Node.js 10+
• MongoDB 3.6+
• Redis 5.0+

How to install

Using Git (recommended)

1. Clone the project from github. Change "myproject" to your project name.

git clone https://github.com/jmagan/cardano-express-web3-skeleton.git ./myproject

Using manual download ZIP

1. Download repository
2. Uncompress to your desired directory

Install npm dependencies after installing (Git or manual download)

cd myproject
npm install
npm update

Setting up environments (development or production)

1. In the root this repository you will find a file named .env.example
2. Create a new file by copying and pasting the file and then renaming it to just .env
3. The file .env is already ignored, so you never commit your credentials.
4. Change the values of the file to your environment (development or production)
5. Upload the .env to your environment server(development or production)
6. If you use the postman collection to try the endpoints, change value of the variable server on your environment to the url of your server, for development mode use http://localhost:3000

IMPORTANT: By default token expires in 3 days (4320 minutes set in .env.example). You can refresh token at endpoint GET /token. If everything it´s ok you will get a new token.

Mailer

To ensure the deliverability of emails sent by this API, Mailgun is used for mailing users when they sign up, so if you want to use that feature go sign up at their website https://www.mailgun.com

If you want to try a different method it´s ok, I used https://nodemailer.com for this API and they have different transport methods like: smtp.

i18n

Language is automatically detected from Accept-Language header on the request. So either you send locale manually on the request or your browser will send its default, if Accept-Language header is not sent then it will use en locale as default.

How to run

Database cleaning and seeding samples

There are 3 available commands for this: fresh, clean and seed.

npm run command

• fresh cleans and then seeds the database with dynamic data.
• clean cleans the database.
• seed seeds the database with dynamic data.

Running in development mode (lifting API server)

npm run dev

You will know server is running by checking the output of the command npm run dev

****************************
*    Starting Server
*    Port: 3000
*    NODE_ENV: development
*    Database: MongoDB
*    DB Connection: OK
****************************

Running tests

It´s a good practice to do tests at your code, so a sample of how to do that in mocha/chai is also included in the /test directory

npm run test

Formatting code

Format your code with prettier by typing:

npm run format

Formatting markdown files

Format all your markdown files with remark by typing:

npm run remark

Linting code

Lint your code with ESLint by typing:

npm run lint

Usage

Once everything is set up to test API routes either use Postman or any other api testing application.

Mocking Cardano signatures

In order to use some endpoints, we need to sign payloads according to CIP-0008 signing spec. For this purpose, the project has a cli util for creating the keys and signatures. This can simulate 255 unique wallets selecting a number between 0 and 254. The cli util starts with the following command:

$ node mockWalletSignatures.js

In order to get the key and signature, we need to go through three steps.

1. First, select the payload for your endpoint. Each end point needs the corresponding action.
2. If the payload needs some additional info, the prompt will ask about them. In the case of the login payload, we will need to insert an email.
3. Select a number between 0 and 254 for selecting a unique wallet. Currently, the number 0 belongs to the admin's wallet and the number 1 to the simple user's wallet. These users are created in the database by the seed script. You can use them for testing purposes in Postman.

In the next example, we can find how to create a login payload for the admin's account.

🤖 Please, select the action for the payload (S: Signup, R: Reset, L: Login)
Action: L
🤖 Creating login payload.
🤖 Choose a number between 0 and 254. Each number represents a unique address and private key. For example in the sample data, the number 0 is the wallet for admin and the number 1 for the simple user. 
Wallet number: 0
🤖 Generating wallet address, key and signature.

📪 Address: stake1u89exkzjnh6898pjg632qv7tnqs6h073dhjg3qq9jp9tcsgq0wfzr

🔑 Key: a201012158203b6a27bcceb6a42d62a3a8d02a6f0d73653215771de243a63ac048a18b59da29 

📝 Signature: 845828a16761646472657373581de1cb9358529df4729c3246a2a033cb9821abbfd16de4888005904abc41a166686173686564f4583a7b22686f7374223a22484f5354222c22616374696f6e223a224c6f67696e222c22656d61696c223a2261646d696e4061646d696e2e636f6d227d5840f93faf1473ad7ff9cdcbc4e2acbb4c24e90329c2ee77b04a8fcc8a716e04df9ae4094fb86f1ff3a88c85e892bf166d1b03bcf5c98cb821be40c285d9fea3e804 

The address, key and signature will be used calling the endpoints. This login endpoint call is currently implemented in the postman-example.json.

Postman API example collection

You can import the example collection to Postman. To import, click the import button located and select postman-example.json located within the root directory.

Go to manage environments to create environments for development, production, etc. On each of the environments you create you will need to:

1. Create a new key authToken and within the /login request this value is automatically updated after a successfull login through a script located in the tests tab. Each time you make a request to the API it will send Authorization header with the token value in the request, you can check this on the headers of users or cities endpoints in the Postman example.

2. Create a second key server with the url of your server, for development mode use http://localhost:3000

This is a REST API, so it works using the following HTTP methods:

• GET (Read): Gets a list of items, or a single item
• POST (Create): Creates an item
• PATCH (Update): Updates an item
• DELETE: Deletes an item

Creating new models

If you need to add more models to the project just create a new file in /app/models/ and it will be loaded dynamically.

Creating new routes

If you need to add more routes to the project just create a new file in /app/routes/ and it will be loaded dynamically.

Creating new controllers

When you create a new controller, try to also create another folder with validations and helpers. Ex. /countries, /countries/validators and /countries/helpers. An example of this is included in the repository.

Support

If you find it useful, please consider inviting me a coffee :)

Bugs or improvements

You are welcome to report any bugs or improvements. Pull requests are always welcome.

License

This project is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more information.