// the find
w3cj/express-api-starter-ts
A basic starter for an express.js API with Typescript
A minimal Express v5 + TypeScript starter you clone when you don't want to wire up the same boilerplate for the fifth time. It gives you a runnable API with request logging, CORS, helmet, env validation via Zod, and a working test setup. Aimed at developers starting a small Node API who want sensible defaults without a framework.
Express v5 adoption is ahead of most starters — v5 is still not widely used in templates and the async error handling improvements alone are worth it. Zod-validated env vars via src/env.ts means bad config fails at startup, not at runtime. Vitest + Supertest test setup is included and actually demonstrates testing the app layer, not just unit testing utilities. The `create-express-api` CLI scaffolding means you can generate a new project without cloning and cleaning up git history.
The project structure is flat enough to be useless as a pattern for anything real — one sample route (`emojis.ts`) teaches nothing about how to organize a multi-resource API. No database layer at all, not even a note about how to add one, so the first thing every adopter does is throw half of this away and rebuild it. No authentication scaffold: no JWT middleware, no session handling, not even a stub. 505 stars for a four-year-old template is a signal that it hasn't compelled people to come back or contribute; the ecosystem has moved on to Hono and Fastify for new projects where Express's middleware model isn't already a sunk cost.