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w3cj/express-api-starter
A basic starter for an express.js API
A minimal Express v5 starter with the basics wired up: morgan, helmet, cors, zod-validated env, and supertest. It's a clean jumping-off point for someone who wants a JS Express API without having to assemble these pieces themselves. The TypeScript sister repo is the one worth bookmarking if you're on a serious project.
Zod env validation is a good call that many starters skip — misconfigured environment variables fail loudly at startup rather than silently at runtime. Express v5 adoption is ahead of most tutorials and templates. Vitest over Jest is a solid modern choice. The structure is flat and obvious — no clever abstractions to untangle before you can start adding routes.
JavaScript-only in 2025 is a real limitation; the README itself points you at the TypeScript version as the better option, which is telling. No authentication scaffold, no database wiring, no error handler beyond whatever Express v5 provides by default — which means you're immediately layering on the parts that actually differ between projects. 466 stars over what looks like several years suggests it's more a teaching artifact than a widely adopted template. The example route is an emoji endpoint, which is cute but tells you nothing about how to structure a real resource.