create-backend-scaffold

A CLI tool to scaffold a production-ready MERN (Express + MongoDB) backend structure in seconds — with optional JWT authentication built in.

Stop rewriting the same folder structure, auth boilerplate, and config setup for every new project. Scaffold it once, in one command.

Features

• 📁 Standard, opinionated backend folder structure (routes, controllers, models, middlewares, config, utils)
• 🔐 Optional JWT authentication (register, login, logout, protected-route middleware) powered by bcryptjs and jsonwebtoken
• 🍃 MongoDB connection setup via Mongoose, pre-wired and ready to use
• ⚡ Express + CORS configured out of the box
• 📦 Auto-generated package.json with only the dependencies you actually need
• 🔑 .env template generated for you, with placeholders for the values you need to fill in

Installation & Usage

No installation needed — just run:

npx create-backend-scaffold

You'll be asked a few quick questions (project name, whether you want authentication, etc.), and your backend will be scaffolded in a new folder.

Then:

cd your-project-name
npm install

Fill in your .env file with your MongoDB connection string (and JWT secret, if you included authentication), then:

nodemon server.js

That's it — your backend is running.

What Gets Generated

your-project-name/
├── server.js
├── package.json
├── .env
└── src/
    ├── app.js
    ├── routes/
    ├── controllers/
    ├── models/
    ├── middlewares/
    ├── config/
    │   └── db.js
    └── utils/

If you choose authentication during setup, you'll additionally get:

• src/models/user.model.js — a User schema with password hashing built in
• src/controllers/auth.controller.js — register, login, and logout logic
• src/middlewares/auth.middleware.js — JWT verification middleware for protected routes
• src/routes/auth.routes.js — auth endpoints, wired into app.js

Roadmap

• Validation library support (Joi / express-validator)
• TypeScript option
• File upload setup (multer + cloud storage)
• Docker setup
• Testing setup (Jest)

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Whether it's a bug fix, a new feature, or an improvement to the docs — check out CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.

License

MIT © [Zain Zahid / Bytes Limited] -- see LICENSE for details.