athena

A modular backend framework atop Apollo and Fastify. Simpler and more opinionated than its inspiration, Nest.

If you're curious about recent changes, please see the changelog.

Features

• GraphQL
• ES modules all the way down
• React utilities

To Do

• GraphQL
  • Simple batch resolvers
  • Subscription resolvers
• HTTP
• CI / CD
• Auth
  • JWT
  • OAuth
• ORM

Getting Started

Install dependencies:

npm install --save @athenajs/core reflect-metadata
npm install --save-dev @types/node typescript

Make sure your tsconfig has "experimentalDecorators": true and "emitDecoratorMetadata": true. To use ES modules, either set "type": "module" in your package.json, or name your files .mts instead of .ts.

Instantiate and start the server:

import "reflect-metadata";
import { createApp } from "@athenajs/core";
import "./config.js";
import "./hello-resolver.js";

const app = createApp();
await app.start();

Since Athena relies on dependency injection rather heavily, you accomplish configuration by extending BaseConfig. The following code is the same ./config.js imported above. (Note the additional dependency on @athenajs/utils, for convenience's sake.)

import { BaseConfig, config } from "@athenajs/core";
import { getModuleDir } from "@athenajs/utils";
import { resolve } from "path";

@config()
export class Config extends BaseConfig {
  // for example, to specify the directories containing your GQL schema, override like so:
  readonly graphqlSchemaDirs = [resolve(getModuleDir(import.meta), "../schema")];
  // or, for new fields altogether, you can use this.optional & this.required to read/verify environment variables
  readonly databaseUrl: string = this.required("DATABASE_URL");
  readonly environment: string | undefined = this.optional("NODE_ENV");
}

It's simple to inject dependencies into constructors, thanks to tsyringe. Writing resolvers is just as straightforward:

/**
 * resolves for the following schema:
 * type Query {
 *   hello: String!
 * }
 */
import { resolver } from "@athenajs/core";
import { Config } from "./config.js";

@resolver()
export class HelloResolver {
  // inject dependencies by including them as constructor params
  constructor(private config: Config) { }

  @resolveQuery()
  async hello(): Promise<string> {
    return "Hello, world!";
  }

  // If you don't want to name your methods after the fields they resolve, don't!
  @resolveField("Query.hello")
  async resolveHello(): Promise<string> {
    return `Hello, resolved world! Running in environment: ${this.config.environment}`;
  }
}

See the demo package for a complete example, including HTTP routes.

Development

We use the Node test runner, so make sure to install Node.JS v18.13 / v19.2 or higher.

To publish new versions, run pnpm version <new-version> in the appropriate package directory; a new Git tag will be pushed, and the CI will publish the package automatically (see statuses here).