apideck-express

Lightweight, beautiful, zero-config API playground and explorer for Express.js APIs.

ApiDeck automatically inspects your Express routing stack to generate a beautiful UI allowing you to browse, test, and document your API without writing manual OpenAPI YAML files.

Features

• Zero Config: Just plug the middleware into your Express app and you're done.
• Dynamic Schema Reflection: Attach classes or schemas to your route handlers, and ApiDeck will automatically infer the structure and generate mock JSON examples.
• Modern UI: Sleek, fully responsive, dark-mode ready interface.
• Automatic Grouping: Endpoints are automatically grouped by root path (e.g., /api/users).

Installation

npm install apideck-express

Quick Start

Register the middleware by passing your Express app instance:

const express = require('express');
const apideck = require('apideck-express');

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

// ... define your routes ...
app.get('/api/users', (req, res) => {
    res.json([{ id: 1, name: 'John Doe' }]);
});

// Enable ApiDeck
app.use('/apideck', apideck({
    app: app, // Pass your express instance!
    title: 'My Express API',
    version: '1.0.0',
    description: 'Explore my Node.js Express API dynamically'
}));

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('Server is running on http://localhost:3000');
    console.log('Explore your API at http://localhost:3000/apideck');
});

Now open http://localhost:3000/apideck in your browser!

Advanced: Dynamic Schema Reflection (Auto-Example Generation)

Unlike strongly typed languages, standard Node.js routing doesn't provide types for request/response bodies natively. However, ApiDeck includes a powerful introspection engine.

To have ApiDeck auto-generate Example JSON payloads and schema properties in the UI, you can simply attach a Class or Object to the .schema (or .model, .DTO) property of your route handler!

Using a Class (DTO)

If you define a class with default properties, ApiDeck will instantiate it and extract the types automatically:

// Define a DTO class with default values so ApiDeck can read the types
class CreateUserDTO {
    constructor() {
        this.name = "John Doe";
        this.email = "[email protected]";
        this.isActive = true;
        this.age = 30;
    }
}

// Your route handler
const createUser = (req, res) => {
    res.status(201).json({ success: true });
};

// Attach the class to the handler!
createUser.schema = CreateUserDTO; 

app.post('/api/users', createUser);

Using a Raw Object

Alternatively, you can just pass a raw object describing the OpenAPI properties directly:

const updateUser = (req, res) => res.json({ success: true });

updateUser.schema = {
    properties: {
        role: { type: 'string' },
        permissions: { type: 'array' }
    },
    example: {
        role: "admin",
        permissions: ["read", "write"]
    }
};

app.patch('/api/users/:id', updateUser);

When you open the ApiDeck UI, the POST/PUT/PATCH routes will now automatically display interactive JSON examples!