goforge

README

goforge

Opinionated CLI/TUI tool for generating Go backend service boilerplate

Overview

Inspired by the fact that I hate rewriting and copy pasting code that I have already written before, so I decided to create a CLI tool to generate the needed files and folder structure to quickly create a new backend service.

The idea is that these are backend services (like microservices), not an entire backend monolith implementation. For starters though this generates a good strtucture, but for it to be an entire monolith it would need to require extra setup from yourself.

P.S. This was encountered while working on fáfnir.

Installation

goforge can be installed on Windows or Linux, WSL, Git Bash:

Install via cURL on Linux, WSL, or Git Bash:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andrearcaina/goforge/main/install.sh | sh

Install via Powershell on Windows:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andrearcaina/goforge/main/install.ps1 | iex

Or via Go (requires Go 1.24.5 or later):

go install github.com/andrearcaina/goforge@latest

CLI Usage

This CLI can generate three server types, along with optional database scaffolding. For now, it only generates a REST API. See the TODO section for planned features.

To generate a Go REST server, run:

> goforge generate -p rest-server -n my-server -s REST -m

This command does the following:

• Creates a directory named rest-server
• Initializes a go.mod file with the module name my-server
• Configures the server type as REST
• Generates a Makefile

Interactive Mode (TUI)

If any required flags are missing, an interactive TUI will appear:

You can see that the TUI appears, asking if you should generate the database files.

The following fields must be provided either via CLI flags or through the TUI (check internal/spec/config.go):

type ServerTypeFlag string

const (
	REST    ServerTypeFlag = "rest"
	GRPC    ServerTypeFlag = "grpc"
	GraphQL ServerTypeFlag = "graphql"
)

type Form struct {
	Name           string
	ServerTypeFlag ServerTypeFlag
	DatabaseFlag   bool
	MakefileFlag   bool
}

If all required flags are provided (including --database), the TUI is skipped and the server is generated immediately.

For example, running with all required flags will produce:

Here is an example where you can trigger the TUI:

TODO

In no particular order:

• Allow different server type boilerplates
  • REST (go-chi)
  • gRPC (grpc-go)
  • GraphQL (gqlgen)
• Add SQLc support flag
  • Potentially add a docker-compose file to spin up a PostgreSQL instance
• Interactive UI for when certain flags are not provided
• Add installation scripts for both Windows and Linux