Directory Structure

Intent comes with a directory structure which can be a good starting point for all scale of applications, small or large. It comes with a recommended setup of directory structure which enables you to start developing features from Day 1 itself. However, these are just recommendations and can be changed as per the requirements.

The Root Directory

The app directory

The app directory is the core of your application. This will contain all of your console commands, controllers, models, validators, event listeners, jobs, etc. Each of this directory is explained in detail in the following section.

The config directory

Inside the config directory, your application configuration lives.

The db directory

The db directory contains all of your migration files in *.js files, using which you can create schemas in your database. You will only use this directory when you are using a SQL based database like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.

The dist directory

This is where all of your typescript files are transpiled and stored as *.js files.

The node_modules directory

The node_modules directory contains all of your application dependencies.

The public directory

The public directory holds all of the static files which should be served from your application over HTTP. It also contains all of the compiled js, css files along with all of the assets that you want to serve publicly to anyone.

The resources directory

The resources directory holds all of the localisation or translation files. It also contains your views, uncompiled tailwind css and js files.

The storage directory

The storage directory contains all of the framework log files. It also contains an empty app directory, which you can use to store user generated files. To do so, most likely you will make use of Storage class which comes packed with features.

The App directory

The App directory is where most of your business logic will reside. The directory contains controllers, providers, console commands, event listeners, jobs, mails, validators, etc.

The console directory

The console directory contains all of the custom Intent commands for your application. These commands may be generated using make:command command. To read more about, see Console.

node intent make:command updateUser
# Successfully created app/console/updateUserCommand.ts

The events directory

The events directory contains all of your event classes. This directory doesn't exist by default and gets created when you create your first event. These events may be generated using make:event command. To read more about what Events offer, read here.

node intent make:event order_placed
# Successfully created app/events/orderPlacedEvent.ts

The exceptions directory

The exceptions directory is where all of your errors exist. It contains a few commonly used HTTP exceptions and an ExceptionFilter class which is responsible for handling all of the exceptions happening in your HTTP application. Read more about exceptions in Error Handling.

node intent make:exception user_not_found
# Successfully created app/exceptions/userNotFoundException.ts

The http directory

The http directory contains all of your controllers, middlewares and guards in their respective directory. Almost all of the logic of handling requests will be placed inside this directory.

node intent make:controller books
# Successfully created app/http/controllers/booksController.ts

The jobs directory

The jobs directory houses all of your Queue Job classes. Again, similar to events directory, this doesn't exist by default and will be created when you generate your first job class, you may do so using make:job command. Head to Queues for more detail.

node intent make:job send_mail
# Successfully created job at app/jobs/sendMailJob.ts

The listeners directory

The events/listeners directory holds all of your event listener classes. This directory doesn't exist by default and will be created when you generate your first listener class, you may do so using make:listener command. See the documentation for more details.

node intent make:listener payment_confirmed
# Successfully created app/events/listeners/paymentConfirmedListener.ts

The mails directory

The mails directory contains all of your mail classes. The directory will be created when you generate your first mail class using make:mail command. You can read more about mails here.

node intent make:mail send_otp
# Successfully created apps/mails/sendOtpMail.ts

The models directory

The models directory contains all of your database models that we will create. When you create your IntentJS application for the first time, it contains one user.ts model by default. You can read about models in detail here.

node intent make:model user
# Successfully created app/models/userModel.ts

The services directory

The services directory holds all of your service classes. You can make use of services to write classes that hold your business logic and inject them inside the controllers.

node intent make:service auth
# Successfully created app/services/authService.ts