Flenco Node Backend CLI

A powerful CLI tool to generate a production-ready Node.js backend boilerplate with Express, TypeScript, and Prisma. It automatically creates CRUD operations with validation, authentication, and file upload capabilities based on your existing database schema.

Features 🚀

• 🔥 Fast project setup
• 📝 TypeScript support
• 🔐 JWT Authentication
• 📊 Prisma ORM integration
• ✨ Automatic CRUD generation
• 📝 Request validation with Zod
• 🔄 Built-in pagination and sorting
• 🛠️ File upload support
• 📧 Email service integration
• 🔍 Error handling
• 🎯 Clean architecture
• 📚 API metadata endpoint
• 📦 Automatic Postman collection generation

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 14
• npm >= 6
• PostgreSQL or MySQL database

Installation

1npm install -g flenco-node-backend-cli

Quick Start

1. Initialize a New Project

1# Create a new directory for your project
2mkdir my-backend
3cd my-backend
4
5# Initialize the project
6flenco-init

During initialization, you'll be prompted for:

• Database type (PostgreSQL/MySQL)
• Database credentials
• Other configuration options

2. Generate APIs for Your Tables

1flenco-generate

This will:

• Show available tables from your database
• Let you select a table
• Configure authentication and file upload options
• Generate complete CRUD operations

3. Refresh APIs When Your Schema Changes

1flenco-refresh

If you've made changes to your database schema, use this command to update your existing API endpoints while preserving your customizations.

Project Structure

├── src/
│   ├── routes/          # API routes
│   ├── controllers/     # Request handlers
│   ├── services/        # Business logic
│   ├── middleware/      # Custom middleware
│   ├── validation/      # Request validation
│   ├── utils/          # Utility functions
│   └── templates/      # Email templates
├── prisma/             # Prisma schema and migrations
├── uploads/           # File uploads directory
└── .env              # Environment variables

Available Scripts

1npm run dev      # Start development server
2npm run build    # Build for production
3npm start        # Start production server

Generated API Endpoints

For each table, the following endpoints are created:

GET    /api/{table}          # Get all records (with pagination)
GET    /api/{table}/:id      # Get single record
POST   /api/{table}          # Create new record
PATCH  /api/{table}/:id      # Update record
DELETE /api/{table}/:id      # Delete record

The system also provides these utility endpoints:

GET    /api/metadata         # Get API documentation and schema information

Postman Collection

Each time you initialize a project or generate/refresh APIs, a Postman collection is automatically generated with:

• Complete API endpoint documentation
• Request examples with proper parameters
• Authentication setup
• Environment variables
• Sample request bodies

You can import this collection directly into Postman to quickly test your API.

Query Parameters

• page: Page number (default: 1)
• limit: Items per page (default: 10)
• sortBy: Sort field
• sortOrder: 'asc' or 'desc'
• search: Search term
• status: Filter by status

Configuration

The generated .env file includes:

1# Database
2DATABASE_URL=your_database_url
3PORT=3000
4
5# JWT
6JWT_SECRET=your-secret-key
7JWT_EXPIRES_IN=1d
8
9# Email (if needed)
10SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com
11SMTP_PORT=587
12SMTP_USER=your-email
13SMTP_PASS=your-password
14
15# File Upload
16MAX_FILE_SIZE=5242880
17ALLOWED_FILE_TYPES=image/jpeg,image/png,image/gif

Authentication

When enabled, protect routes using the JWT middleware:

1router.use(auth());

Validation

Request validation is handled using Zod:

1router.post('/', validate(createSchema), controller.create);

Error Handling

The generated project includes global error handling for:

• Validation errors
• Authentication errors
• Not found errors
• Database errors
• Unexpected errors

Commands

• flenco-init: Initialize a new project
• flenco-generate: Generate APIs for a table
• flenco-refresh: Refresh APIs for tables that have changed in the database
• flenco-help: Show available commands

Using the Refresh Command

When your database schema changes, you can update your existing APIs with:

1flenco-refresh

This will:

• Pull the latest database schema using Prisma introspection
• Show you a list of tables with existing APIs
• Let you select which tables to refresh
• Regenerate the routes, controllers, and services while preserving your customizations
• Keep settings like authentication and file upload configurations

This is particularly useful during development when your database schema evolves. The command ensures your APIs stay in sync with your database structure without having to manually recreate them.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Issues

If you find a bug or want to request a new feature, please create an issue at GitHub Issues.

Author

Atish Paul

License

MIT

Support

For support, email support@flenco.in or raise an issue on GitHub.