Express ESM Generator CLI 🚀

A modern, lightweight, and developer-friendly CLI tool to generate Express.js web applications configured out-of-the-box with Native ES Modules (ESM), EJS Layouts, Bootstrap 5, and high-performance tooling (Oxlint & Oxfmt).

✨ Features

• ⚡ Native ES Modules: Fully configured with "type": "module" for modern JavaScript syntax.
• 🎨 EJS & EJS Layouts: Pre-configured view engine with reusable layout support.
• 💄 Bootstrap 5 UI: Styled homepage and built-in modern 404 error page.
• 🛠️ Oxidation Tooling: Blazing-fast code linting (oxlint) and formatting (oxfmt).
• 📁 Clean & Scalable Architecture: Organized directory structure (routes, controllers, config, views, public).
• 🔑 Automatic Env Setup: Automatically creates .env from .env.example.
• 🛡️ Custom 404 Handling: Built-in 404 route handling for web views and API endpoints.

🚀 Quick Start

Generate a new Express ESM project instantly using npx:

npx express-generator-esm-cli my-app

Installation & Execution

# Navigate to the generated directory
cd my-app

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development server with live reload
npm run dev

Your app will be running at http://localhost:3000.

💻 CLI Options & Usage

npx express-generator-esm-cli <project-name> [options]

| Option | Shortcut | Description | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | --help | -h | Display CLI usage and help information | | --force | -f | Overwrite target directory if it already exists |

Examples

# Generate app in a specific folder
npx express-generator-esm-cli my-api-service

# Generate app in current working directory
npx express-generator-esm-cli .

# Force overwrite an existing directory
npx express-generator-esm-cli my-app --force

📁 Generated Project Architecture

my-app/
├── public/                # Static assets (CSS, JS, images)
│   └── css/
│       └── app.css
├── src/
│   ├── config/            # View & app configurations
│   │   └── view.js
│   ├── controllers/       # Application logic & request handlers
│   │   └── welcome.controller.js
│   ├── routes/            # Route declarations
│   │   ├── api.routes.js
│   │   └── web.routes.js
│   ├── utils/             # Helper utilities & standard API responses
│   │   └── response.js
│   ├── views/             # EJS templates
│   │   ├── layouts/
│   │   │   └── main.ejs   # Base HTML layout
│   │   └── pages/
│   │       ├── home.ejs   # Homepage view
│   │       └── 404.ejs    # 404 Error page view
│   ├── app.js             # Express application setup & middleware
│   └── server.js          # HTTP Server entry point
├── .env                   # Environment variables (Auto-copied)
├── .env.example           # Example environment template
├── .oxfmtrc.json          # Oxfmt formatting rules
├── .oxlintrc.json         # Oxlint linting rules
└── package.json           # Node.js project manifest & scripts

📜 Available NPM Scripts

In your generated project directory, you can run:

| Command | Description | | :--- | :--- | | npm run dev | Starts the server with nodemon for auto-reloading | | npm run lint | Runs oxlint to check for code quality issues | | npm run lint:fix | Automatically fixes linting errors with oxlint | | npm run fmt | Formats all code files using oxfmt | | npm run fmt:check | Verifies code formatting status |

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.