create-arc-express

Scaffold production-ready Express.js backends with interactive feature selection.

npx create-arc-express my-api

Features

Pick only what you need — every feature is optional:

| Feature | Description | |---------|-------------| | Authentication | Session-based or JWT, with register/login/password-reset | | Database | Sequelize, Prisma, or Drizzle with PostgreSQL or MySQL | | Google OAuth | Social login via Google OAuth 2.0 | | Email | Nodemailer SMTP with password reset templates | | File Upload | Cloudinary + Multer integration | | CSRF Protection | Double-submit cookie pattern | | Audit Logging | Track user actions in the database | | Docker Compose | Pre-configured PostgreSQL/MySQL + Redis | | Testing | Vitest API Testing | | GitHub Actions | CI pipeline with multi-version Node.js matrix | | TypeScript | Full TypeScript support with tsx |

Generated Project Structure

my-api/
├── src/
│   ├── app.js              # Entry point with graceful shutdown
│   ├── api/                 # Route modules
│   │   ├── index.js         # Route registry
│   │   ├── status/          # Health check
│   │   └── auth/            # Auth routes + controller + schema + tests
│   ├── db/                  # Models, migrations, seeds
│   └── lib/                 # Shared infrastructure
│       ├── config.js        # Centralized env config
│       ├── server.js        # Express app factory
│       ├── logger/          # Winston + Morgan (colorized output)
│       ├── middlewares/      # Auth, validation, CSRF, sanitize, rate-limit
│       ├── services/        # Error/success response helpers, audit
│       └── utils/           # Pagination, email, file upload, etc.
├── .env.example
├── package.json
├── docker-compose.yml       # (if Docker selected)
├── vitest.config.js         # (if Testing selected)
└── README.md

What's Inside

Architecture Patterns

• Layered structure: api/ → controller + schema + tests per module
• Centralized config: All env vars in lib/config.js
• Standardized responses: APIResponse class with consistent { success, message, data }
• Zod validation: Request body/params/query validation middleware
• XSS protection: Automatic HTML sanitization on all request bodies
• Production logging: Colorized Winston + Morgan with file rotation

Adding a New API Module

src/api/
└── posts/
    ├── index.js          # Route definitions
    ├── controller.js     # Business logic
    ├── schema/
    │   └── index.js      # Zod schemas
    └── __test__/
        └── posts.test.js # Tests

Then register it in src/api/index.js:

import { posts } from "./posts/index.js";

export const getApiRouter = () => {
  const router = Router();
  posts(router);
  return router;
};

Development

# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/abdullahiqbal93/arc-express.git
cd arc-express

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Test locally
node bin/index.js test-project

License

MIT