@nyota/create-express-app

Enterprise-ready CLI to scaffold modern Express 5 applications with TypeScript, tsx, modern ORMs, and battle-tested defaults.

Features

• Express 5: Native async error handling without boilerplate wrappers.
• Modern Runtime: Powered by tsx (Fast esbuild-based watcher replacing legacy ts-node-dev).
• Modern Interactive UX: Styled using @clack/prompts visual steppers.
• Built-in Security & Validation: Helmet HTTP headers, CORS, and Zod runtime schema validation.
• Database & ORM Support:
  • Drizzle ORM (Modern drizzle-kit standard dialect)
  • Prisma 6
  • TypeORM
  • Mongoose (MongoDB)
  • Raw PostgreSQL (pg)
• Testing: Choice of Vitest or Jest pre-configured with Supertest.
• DevOps: Production-ready Dockerfile & Docker Compose services.
• Transactional Safety: Safe file system rollback engine preventing partial directory corruption if setup is interrupted.

Quick Start

Interactive Mode (Recommended)

npx @nyota/create-express-app@latest

Quick Start with Defaults

Scaffold a TypeScript Express 5 app with recommended security headers and CORS in seconds:

npx @nyota/create-express-app@latest my-api --yes

CLI Options & Flags

npx @nyota/create-express-app [project-name] [options]

Options:
  -y, --yes                      Skip prompts and use standard defaults
  -t, --template <template>      Template choice: typescript or javascript
  -p, --pm <packageManager>      Package manager: npm, pnpm, yarn, bun
  -o, --orm <orm>                Database ORM: none, prisma, drizzle, typeorm, mongoose, pg
  --cors / --no-cors             Enable / disable CORS support
  --helmet / --no-helmet         Enable / disable Helmet security headers
  --validation                   Include Zod request validation
  --logger                       Include Winston logger
  --docker                       Include Docker and docker-compose setup
  --tests <framework>            Testing framework: vitest, jest, none
  --git / --no-git               Initialize Git repository

Generated Project Structure (TypeScript)

my-express-app/
├── src/
│   ├── middleware/
│   │   └── validation.middleware.ts  # (if Zod enabled)
│   ├── routes/
│   │   └── v1/
│   │       └── index.ts              # API v1 routes
│   ├── utils/
│   │   └── logger.ts                 # (if Winston enabled)
│   ├── db/                           # (if Drizzle enabled)
│   │   └── schema.ts
│   └── index.ts                      # Express 5 entry point
├── tests/                            # (if Vitest / Jest enabled)
│   └── app.test.ts
├── drizzle.config.ts                 # (if Drizzle enabled)
├── prisma/                           # (if Prisma enabled)
│   └── schema.prisma
├── .env
├── .env.example
├── .gitignore
├── tsconfig.json
├── Dockerfile                        # (if Docker enabled)
├── docker-compose.yml                # (if Docker enabled)
├── package.json
└── README.md

Scaffolding Script Commands

Inside your generated project directory:

| Script Command | Description | | :----------------------- | :-------------------------------------------------------- | | npm run dev | Starts development server with hot-reload via tsx watch | | npm run build | Builds TypeScript code to dist/ | | npm start | Runs production build from dist/index.js | | npm test | Runs Vitest or Jest test suite | | npm run db:push | Pushes Drizzle schema directly to database | | npm run prisma:migrate | Runs Prisma database migrations |

License

MIT © Nyota Imara Technologies