Coding1 -📘 Creating the Project Folder Structure

🧠 What You’ll Learn

In this lesson, you’ll set up the folder structure for your NodeJS RESTful API using:

• Node.js + Express
• TypeScript
• MongoDB (with Mongoose)

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🧱 Step 1: Initialize a New Project

Open your terminal and run:

mkdir REST-API
cd REST-API
npm init -y

This creates your project folder and a basic package.json file.

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⚙️ Step 2: Install Required Dependencies

Install these packages:

npm install express mongoose dotenv
npm install --save-dev typescript ts-node-dev @types/node @types/express @types/mongoose

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🛠️ Step 3: Initialize TypeScript

Run:

npx tsc --init

Then update your tsconfig.json for better development experience:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "ES2020",
    "module": "commonjs",
    "rootDir": "./src",
    "outDir": "./dist",
    "strict": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "skipLibCheck": true
  }
}

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📁 Step 4: Create Your Folder Structure

Inside the root directory, create a folder named src:

mkdir src
cd src
mkdir controller model routes
touch app.ts dbconnect.ts

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Your final folder structure should look like this:

REST-API/
├── node_modules/
├── src/
│   ├── controller/        # All controller logic (e.g., auth.controller.ts)
│   ├── model/             # Mongoose models (e.g., user.model.ts)
│   ├── routes/            # All API route files (e.g., auth.routes.ts)
│   ├── app.ts             # Main application entry point
│   └── dbconnect.ts       # MongoDB connection setup
├── .env                   # Environment variables
├── .gitignore
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json

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💡 Bonus: Recommended .gitignore

Create a .gitignore file and add:

node_modules/
dist/
.env

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✅ What’s Next?

In the next lesson, you’ll:

• Connect your project to MongoDB
• Write the database setup logic in dbconnect.ts