ENT Stack
Logo GitHub
ENT Stack Illustration

Where Next.js meets Express

Together when you want, separate when you need

What's Inside

The ENT Stack is a robust, full-stack monorepo that integrates Express, Next.js, and TRPC, offering a streamlined solution for web app development.

It allows you to build and share code between frontend and backend in a single project while maintaining the flexibility to host them independently.

Features

🌀 PNPM Workspace - Monorepo

The stack uses PNPM Workspace because it's simple and painless to use. With its efficient dependency management and shared package architecture, PNPM ensures faster installs and a clean, modular workflow.

  • The apps folder contains both the backend (apps/backend) and frontend (apps/frontend) codebases.
  • The packages folder includes a shared directory (packages/shared) for common configurations, utilities, services, type definitions, and translations.

To maintain uniform code quality, each directory includes an eslint.config.js file with consistent rules. A root-level tsconfig.json provides a base set of TypeScript configurations, extended by each subproject as needed.

🤝 Type-Safe API Layer

The stack leverages TRPC to create a type-safe bridge between the frontend and backend, ensuring type hints and autocompletion for API endpoints directly in your IDE.

🌐 Translations and Routing (i18n)

A custom, lightweight solution handles localization using standalone functions based on ICU message syntax.

  • Translation functions can be used anywhere in the stack (backend and frontend).
  • Scripts for message import and export included.
  • Frontend routes are translatable and evaluated dynamically using Next.js middleware.

🔒 Authentication & Authorization

The stack provides passwordless registration and login via short verification PINs, secure JWT tokens, and UUID-based refresh tokens. Frontend routes can be marked as protected in routes.ts, evaluated in middleware.ts.

⚙️ Environment & Configuration

Uses T3 Env for type-safe environment variables. Shared configuration is extended by backend and frontend-specific settings.

🪵 Logging

Employs Pino for lightweight and efficient logging across the stack.

🪲 Error Handling and Validation

Uses Zod for input validation and type-safe error management, integrated with TRPC.

🔄 State Management

Uses Zustand for lightweight state management and Tanstack Query for asynchronous data fetching and caching.

🛢️ Database

Uses Drizzle ORM for type-safe database interactions with MySQL, along with Docker for local database setup.

✉️ Email Sending

Integrates Resend for email sending with templates written in Handlebars.

🤖 Testing

Uses Playwright for frontend and backend testing, and Mailslurp for email testing.