Project Initialization

Start by creating a new project directory.

$ mkdir myapp
$ cd myapp

Run the command below to create the main configuration file called ./package.json.

$ npm init --yes

Install the nodemon package globally which we will use in development for auto-reloading our code when the code changes.

$ npm install -g nodemon

Create also its configuration file ./nodemon.json.

{
  "verbose": true
}

Create a simple application within the ./src directory.

$ mkdir src
$ echo 'console.log(`Hello World!`);' >> ./src/index.js

Open the ./package.json file and set the variables as shown below.

{
  "main": "./src/index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node ./src/index.js"
  }
}

A common convention is also to create a ./README.md file with the description of your application.

$ touch README.md

Every project should use some kind of code revision control. Git is the most popular, free and open source distributed version control system. Let's initialize the repository.

$ git init .

Create a new file called ./.gitignore with a list of files and folders which should not be committed into Git repository.

$ (echo .DS_Store; echo .vscode; echo node_modules) >> .gitignore

We can now do the initial commit.

$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'project initialized'

Run npm start to run the application. Run nodemon --exec npm start to start the application in development.