falcobot

Notes

If you are going to dive into Node js, you might as well do it right with typescript (easier builds + intellisense!) and yarn (instead of npm as it's much faster!).

Installation

Install yarn globally

npm install -g yarn

Install typescript globally

npm install -g typescript

If you have already installed this project from previous, delete the node_modules folder and start again.

Clone the repo (after merging this branch to master)

git clone https://github.com/fossilz/falcobot

Install dependencies

# Installs all dependencies using yarn
yarn

Adding More Dependencies using Yarn

If you need to add dependencies:

# Adds a dependency
yarn add dependency-name

# Adds a DEV dependency
yarn add -D dependency-name

# It is always a good idea when using typescript to try and install type declarations for dependencies
yarn add @types/dependency-name

If the @types/dependency-name does not exist, not to worry, the package comes with prebuilt types, or you need to add the following declare statement in ./src/types.d.ts;

declare module "dependency-name";

Environment Variables

This package uses dotenv-safe to load environment variables.

Copy the .env.example file twice to make the following 2 files:

.env file - This is your DEVELOPEMENT environment file

ENV=development
PORT=4000
CORS_ORIGIN=*
DISCORD_TOKEN=this_token_cannot_be_empty_or_an_error_is_thrown

.env.production file - This is your PRODUCTION environment file

ENV=production
PORT=4000
CORS_ORIGIN=*
DISCORD_TOKEN=this_token_cannot_be_empty_or_an_error_is_thrown

Adding New Environment Variables

Add the new environment variables to both your .env file AND your .env.production file if need be.

ENV=development
PORT=4000
CORS_ORIGIN=*
DISCORD_TOKEN=this_token_cannot_be_empty_or_an_error_is_thrown
NEW_ENV_VAR=hello
DISCORD_WEBHOOK=https://discord.com/api/webhooks/id/token

After adding your new env variables, run the following script:

yarn gen:env:types

This will update your .env.example file and it will update the strongly-typed ProcessEnv interface in your ./src/env.d.ts so typescript will recognise the new variable.

See gen-env-types for more info.

Build

Take a look at the scripts in your package.json to understand what commands are executed.

The build your typescript .ts files from your src folder into your dist folder

# Build ./src to ./dist
yarn build

# Build ./src to ./dist and watch for changes
yarn dev

Building using a server

To start the dev server, in a separate terminal window, run the following command:

# Starts the dev server that reloads when you change files in your src using yarn dev (watched changes)
yarn start:dev

# If you just want to run the production server, or when your app is deployed on production, it should init with this
yarn start

Open up http://localhost:4000 in your browser.

Navigate to http://localhost:4000/discord to test that route.

Add more routes/logic to build out your application.

If you do not have Postman, I suggest you install it to keep track of your different routes.

Building using scripts

You can add more scripts to the scripts folder to try out code.

To execute the scripts, add a script alias to your scripts in package.json:

{
  ...
  "scripts": {
    "example:script": "yarn build && ts-node -T ./scripts/example.script.ts",
    "discord:login": "yarn build && ts-node -T ./scripts/discord.login.ts",
    ...
  },
  ...
}

To run the scripts, just run the command using yarn

# Runs the example script
yarn example:script

# Runs the async discord login script
yarn discord:login

Testing

Testing uses commonjs format( using require). Mark sure to require files from your dist folders for testing.

Testing with AVA

# Runs all tests
yarn test

# Run a single test (-v is verbose)
yarn ava -m <test.name> -v

# Run a single test example
yarn ava -m config.port -v

Database

A sqlite db is fine.

You might want to also consider creating a Firebase Project and Firebase Realtime / Firestore DB. It's free and super simple to use.

Check out Fireabse

Deployment

If I were you, I would complete a full deployment to your production machine right from the start. This helps you get env variables right and CI/CD pipelines.

How are you going to deploy? GitHub Actions/Workflows? Create a docker container? Etc.