Fastify starter

A starter project using Fastify.

Structure

• data - a place to put data sources like SQLite databases.
• generators - scripts used to generate project files.
• generators/templates - templates used in generators.
• public - static files served directly to the client.
• public/css - CSS stylesheets.
• public/images - Images.
• public/js - JavaScript files.
• src - server-side application files.
• src/controllers - request handlers grouped by a resource.
• src/hooks - Fastify route level hooks.
• src/migrations - Knex.js database migrations.
• src/models - classes used to interact with the database.
• src/plugins - Fastify plugins.
• src/views - Liquid templates grouped by a resource.
• src/views/layouts - Liquid layouts.
• index.js - the main application file.
• knexfile.js - Knex.js configuration file used for migrations.

Controllers

Controllers are defined as classes. All controllers inherit from BaseController defined in src/controllers/base_controller.js. BaseController specifies the hooks that will be assigned to each route. Hooks defined in hooks field will be assigned to all routes. Hooks for individula routes can be specified using route-specific fields, e.g., indexHooks.

The default routes are inspired by Ruby on Rails and they are functions named index, new, create, view, edit, update and delete. create route is being called on a POST request. update route is being called on both POST and PUT requests. delete route is being called on GET, POST and DELETE requests.

You can add custom routes using a special attribute customRoutes. It is an array of arrays with 3 or 4 elements: the HTTP method as a string, the route as a string, the handler as a function and optionally a hooks object.

const BaseController = require('./base_controller')
const { authenticate } = require('../hooks/authenticator')

function logSomething(request, response) {
	console.log('something')
}

class Home extends BaseController {
	hooks = {
		preHandler: authenticate
	}

	indexHooks = {
		preHandler: logSomething
	}

	customRoutes = [
		['GET', '/do-something', this.doSomething, {
			preHandler: logSomething
		}]
	]

  index(request, response) {
    return response.render('home/index')
  }

  doSomething(request, response) {
  	// ...

  	return response.render('home/do_something')
  }
}

module.exports = Home

Views

The views are using Liquid template engine through a custom plugin defined in src/plugins/renderer.js. Fastify has a great plugin @fastify/view that you can use instead, but it doesn't support Liquid layouts.

Special files

src/plugins/router.js

The router automatically loads all controllers and registers the route handlers.

src/database.js

Creates a connection to the database.

Database

This starter comes with SQLite database support by default using better-sqlite3 and Knex.js specifically for migrations. Interation with the database is done using better-sqlite3 directly. The connection is created in src/database.js file and can be used anywhere in the project.

Migration commands

npx knex migrate:make migration_name

npx knex migrate:latest

npx knex migrate:rollback