Building Production APIs with Node.js and Express

About this course

Tutorials show you a 5-line Express server. Production needs 50× more. We build a working SaaS API together: routing, validation (Zod), Postgres via Prisma, JWT auth with refresh tokens, rate limiting, structured logging, and proper error handling. We deploy to a $5/month VPS with PM2 and nginx — the same stack Tahout itself runs on.

What you'll cover

• 1

  Project setup, TypeScript, and the folder structure

  tsconfig, package.json, the structure that scales beyond 10 files.

• 2

  Express, routing, and middleware

  REST routing. Custom middleware. The order that catches mistakes.

• 3

  Prisma + Postgres

  Schema, migrations, queries. Why Prisma beats raw SQL for 80% of work.

• 4

  Auth with JWT and refresh tokens

  Sign-up, sign-in, refresh, sign-out. The mistakes that get you breached.

• 5

  Validation, errors, and edge cases

  Zod schemas. Consistent error responses. The 5 errors users actually see.

• 6

  Rate limiting, logging, monitoring

  Express-rate-limit. Pino logger. Lightweight uptime monitoring.

• 7

  Deploy to a real VPS

  Hostinger / DigitalOcean. PM2, nginx, Let's Encrypt. Your API live on the open internet.

Skills you'll build

• Node.js
• Express
• TypeScript
• Prisma
• JWT
• REST API
• PM2
• nginx