create-express-forge

⚡ Scaffold production-ready Express.js TypeScript backends in seconds

Quick Start

npx create-express-forge my-api
# or
npm create express-forge my-api
# or (short alias)
npx cef my-api

What You Get

Interactive prompts let you choose:

Option	Choices
Architecture	Modular (feature-based) · MVC
ORM	Prisma · Sequelize · None
Database	PostgreSQL · MySQL · SQLite · None
Logger	Winston · Pino · None
Testing	Vitest · Jest · None
Docker	Dockerfile + docker-compose

Generated Project Includes

• ✅ TypeScript + tsx hot-reload dev server
• ✅ Zod env validation on startup — fails fast on bad config
• ✅ Global centralized error handler — ApiError, ZodError, unknown errors all handled
• ✅ Request validation middleware via validate(schema)
• ✅ ApiError — custom class with static factories (.notFound(), .unauthorized(), etc.)
• ✅ ApiResponse — consistent JSON response helpers
• ✅ asyncHandler — wraps async routes, no try/catch needed
• ✅ Helmet + CORS + compression + rate limiter
• ✅ Graceful shutdown (SIGTERM / SIGINT)
• ✅ Multi-stage Dockerfile with healthcheck
• ✅ docker-compose with correct DB service

Repository Structure

create-express-forge/
├── packages/
│   ├── create-express-forge/   ← The published CLI
│   ├── typescript-config/      ← Shared internal TS config
│   └── eslint-config/          ← Shared internal ESLint config
├── examples/
│   └── modular-postgres-prisma/ ← Pre-generated example
└── .github/workflows/           ← CI + Release

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Versioning & Branches

Branch	npm tag	Description
main	latest	Stable releases
next	next	Pre-releases / beta

License

MIT © Yatharth Lakhate