Building a RESTful Express TypeScript API with Prisma and Authentication

In this blog post, I’ll guide you through building a RESTful API using Express.js and TypeScript, along with Prisma ORM for database operations and JWT for user authentication. This API includes CRUD operations for posts and user authentication functionalities, ensuring secure access through JWT-based authentication.

🚀 Features

This project has the following features:

👤 User Registration and Login: Secure user authentication.
🔐 JWT-based Authentication: Protect routes by verifying JWT tokens.
📝 CRUD Operations for Posts: Create, Read, Update, and Delete posts.
🐘 PostgreSQL Database with Prisma ORM: Database operations are handled by Prisma ORM.
📚 Swagger API Documentation: Automatically generated API documentation using Swagger.
🚨 Comprehensive Error Handling and Logging: Built-in error handling and logging functionality.
🌐 CORS Support: Handle cross-origin resource sharing.

📋 Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed on your system:

Node.js (v14 or later)
npm or yarn
PostgreSQL database (We’re using Neon Postgres)

🛠 Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/azharhussain/Express-TypeScript-API-with-Prisma-and-Authentication.git
cd Express-TypeScript-API-with-Prisma-and-Authentication

2. Install the dependencies:

npm install

3. Set up your environment variables:

Create a .env file in the root directory and add the following:

DATABASE_URL="your_postgresql_connection_string"
JWT_SECRET="your_jwt_secret"
PORT=1000

4. Set up the database:

Run the Prisma migration command to initialize the database schema:

npx prisma migrate dev --name init

🚀 Usage

To start the development server, run:

npm run dev

The server will start at http://localhost:1000 (or any port you’ve specified in the .env file).

📚 API Documentation

Once the server is running, you can access the Swagger API documentation by navigating to: http://localhost:1000/api-docs

🛠 API Endpoints

Authentication Routes:

POST /api/auth/register: Register a new user.
POST /api/auth/login: Login an existing user.

Post Routes:

GET /api/posts: Get all posts.
GET /api/posts/:id: Get a specific post by ID.
POST /api/posts: Create a new post (requires authentication).
PUT /api/posts/:id: Update an existing post (requires authentication).
DELETE /api/posts/:id: Delete a post (requires authentication).

🔍 Testing

To test the API endpoints, you can use tools like Postman or Insomnia. A Postman collection is also provided in the repository to make testing easier.

Steps to Test:

Import the Postman collection into your Postman workspace.
After logging in, update the authToken variable in Postman with a valid JWT token.
Test the available API endpoints.

📝 Logging

Logging is handled with pino. The logs are written to two files:

error.log: Captures error logs.
combined.log: Logs all activities.

In development mode, logs are also printed to the console for easier debugging.

👥 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you’d like to improve the project, follow these steps:

Fork the repository.

Create a new branch:

 git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name

Make your changes.
Commit the changes:
```
 git commit -am 'Add some feature'
```

Push to the branch:

 git push origin feature/your-feature-name

Create a new Pull Request.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. Feel free to use and modify it as per your requirements.

📞 Contact

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me:

Website: Azhar Hussain
Email: azharfastian@gmail.com

By following this guide, you’ll have a robust RESTful API with Express, TypeScript, Prisma, and JWT authentication ready to go. Happy coding!