node-grpc-starter

What is this?

A bare bones Node.JS gRPC starter template. It does not use typescript, it does not use any additional frameworks.

It provides boilerplate to start a gRPC microservice using an example echo service .proto file and dynamic bindings.

Dependencies

• @grpc/grpc-js (core gRPC server)
• @grpc/proto-loader (.proto parser for dynamic bindings)
• @grpc/reflection (provide reflection calls for method discovery in clients like Postman)
• grpc-health-check (provide health endpoints)
• pino (logger)
• dotenv (configuration)

Dev. Dependencies

• nodemon (hot reloading on change)
• standard (opinionated code linting)
• node-forge (boostraps PKI for mTLS E2E testing in CI)
• testcontainers (verify container builds and runs)
• jsdoc (create html documentation folder from code comments)

node --test is used for testing instead of bringing in a library/framework.

Scripts

Scripts available in package.json

• build:image builds a docker image
• build:docs builds the docs folder using jsdoc
• build:context creates a folder showing the files sent to the docker build context under the context folder
• lint runs standard lint checks
• lint:fix fixes all auto correctable lint failures
• start runs the server
• start:dev runs the server using nodemon and reloads on change
• test runs tests

Workflows

A github workflow is included that

1. Runs unit tests and lint checks
2. Runs npm audit checks
3. Builds multi-platform docker image
4. Scans image using trivy and uploads results to GitHub

Environment Variables

Name	Description	Default
SERVER_PORT	Bind port of the server	3000
SERVER_CA_CERT	String value of the CA in PEM format
SERVER_KEY_PAIRS	JSON array, each object containing a key and cert property
SERVER_VALIDATE_CLIENT_CERT	Boolean toggling whether or not the server will validate the client certificate, when set to true this enables mTLS	false
SERVER_SUPRESS_INSECURE_WARNING	When running without TLS a warning is logged, setting this to true disables that log message	false
DOTENV_FILE_PATHS	Comma seperated list of paths to .env files, if not provided .env is used, encrypted files should have a .vault ending extension
DOTENV_DEBUG	When enabled debug messages from dotenv are logged	false
DOTENV_VAULT_KEY_PATH	When set, this path is used to load a key for decrypting .vault dotenv files, when set has priority over DOTENV_VAULT_KEY
DOTENV_VAULT_KEY	When set, this is used to decrypt .vault dotenv files
DOTENV_OVERRIDE	When set to true, values specified in .env files will override values already defined in the destination	false

Automated Dependency Updates

A renovate configuration is provided to keep dependencies up to date and auto merge if tests pass.