Understand the Application We Will Build
We will build a User Management REST API from scratch.
The API will support the following features:
User management
- Create a user.
- Retrieve all users.
- Retrieve a user by ID.
- Update a user.
- Partially update a user.
- Delete a user.
Authentication
- User registration.
- User login.
- Password hashing.
- JWT access tokens.
- Protected endpoints.
Advanced API features
- Request validation.
- Centralized error handling.
- Pagination.
- Searching.
- Filtering.
- Sorting.
- Rate limiting.
- API security.
- Automated testing.
Production readiness
- Environment configuration.
- Logging.
- Health checks.
- Graceful shutdown.
- Docker deployment.
We will use MongoDB Atlas for database hosting, but the same implementation can be adapted to a locally installed MongoDB server.
Project Technology Stack
Runtime
Node.js
Framework
Express.js
Database
MongoDB
ODM
Mongoose
Authentication
JWT
Validation
Zod
Testing
Jest and Supertest
Key Takeaways
The final project is a complete User Management API.
We will implement CRUD and authentication incrementally.
The application will follow a maintainable backend architecture.