Miller Start

Miller start is a full stack application you can use to learn NextJs and NestJS and accelerate your own product builds.

This is the code that powers the Miller Start website and some other apps I run. There is full documentation available here.

The backend uses a set of libraries I have built over years and that is available on GitHub as nest-backend-libs.

The purpose of Miller Start

Miller start is a full stack application you can use to learn NextJs and NestJS.

It is also a way to quickly build your own applications using these technologies.

I also use it a place to keep examples for my blog posts and learning on https://www.darraghoriordan.com.

Navigating the code

You can navigate the code on the miller start website like in an IDE. This README content will change if you navigate to any sub directory which contains a README that is relevant to that directory.

The main monorepo is this repo - use-miller. The other important repo is nest-backend-libs which contains the shared libraries for the backend.

Both of these repos are available in the miller docs and on the GitHub repos.

Dokku deploy notes

If you deploy via git push dokku main and your Dockerfile-be clones private GitHub repos during the image build, prefer using BuildKit secrets (so the token doesn’t end up in build args, logs, or image history).

On the Dokku host:

• Put your GitHub token into a file readable by Dokku (example path):
  • /home/dokku/.github_token
• So you just need to make sure that file actually exists and contains the token:
  • sudo test -f /home/dokku/.github_token && sudo head -c 4 /home/dokku/.github_token && echo
  • If missing: sudo sh -c 'umask 077; printf "%s" "ghp_..." > /home/dokku/.github_token'
• Configure the app build to pass it as a BuildKit secret:
  • dokku docker-options:add use-miller build "--secret id=github_token,src=/home/dokku/.github_token"
• Verify it’s set:
  • dokku docker-options:report use-miller

Then redeploy:

• git push dokku main

Folder Structure

Miller start is a monorepo with the following structure:

apps
  ├── backend (NestJS backend)
  ├── backend-e2e (Jest e2e api tests)
  ├── frontend (NextJS frontend)
infrastructure
  ├── local-dev (Terraform for local development)
  ├── production (Terraform for production)
libs
  ├── projectDeploy (Scripts for deploying the project)
  ├── projectSetup (Scripts for initialising a new project)
  ├── shared-api-client (Typescript client built from OpenAPI spec)