How to customize generated method names — remove controller prefix from operation names?

[gravitonlab]

Hi,

I'm using swagger-typescript-api@13.10.0 with the --modular and --axios flags to generate a TypeScript API client from an OpenAPI 3.0 schema.
Current behavior:
Methods inside generated classes include the full operationId from the spec, which results in verbose names like:

export class Contents<SecurityDataType = unknown> extends HttpClient<SecurityDataType> {
  contentsControllerPostAsync = (...) => this.request<void, any>({ ... });
  contentsControllerGetAsync = (...) => this.request<void, any>({ ... });
  contentsControllerGetStreamAsync = (...) => this.request<void, any>({ ... });
}

Desired behavior:
I'd like to strip the controller name prefix (ContentsController_) and keep only the action part:

export class Contents<SecurityDataType = unknown> extends HttpClient<SecurityDataType> {
  postAsync = (...) => this.request<void, any>({ ... });
  getAsync = (...) => this.request<void, any>({ ... });
  getStreamAsync = (...) => this.request<void, any>({ ... });
}

Questions:

1. Is there a built-in configuration option, hook (e.g., hooks.onCreateRouteName), or codeGenConstructs override that allows customizing method names at generation time?

2. If not, what is the recommended approach to achieve this? Should I:

• Preprocess the OpenAPI spec to modify operationId values before generation?
• Use custom EJS templates to control method naming?
• Apply a post-processing step to rename methods in the generated .ts files?

Any guidance or examples would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your work on this tool!

[yudin-s]

Yes, this is the kind of customization I would do with a hook, not by post-processing generated files.

In current swagger-typescript-api, route names can be changed with hooks.onCreateRouteName or hooks.onFormatRouteName. For your case, onCreateRouteName is the clearest because it receives the final route name info and the raw route info.

Example config idea:

import { generateApi } from 'swagger-typescript-api'

const stripControllerPrefix = (name: string) =>
  name.replace(/^[A-Za-z0-9]+Controller_?/i, '')

await generateApi({
  input: './openapi.json',
  output: './src/api',
  modular: true,
  httpClientType: 'axios',
  hooks: {
    onCreateRouteName(routeNameInfo, rawRouteInfo) {
      return {
        ...routeNameInfo,
        usage: stripControllerPrefix(routeNameInfo.usage),
        original: stripControllerPrefix(routeNameInfo.original),
      }
    },
  },
})

A couple of caveats:

• Make sure the stripped names are still unique inside the generated module/class. If PostAsync exists in two controllers that end up in the same module, the generator may need to suffix duplicates.
• If you control the OpenAPI document, the cleanest long-term fix is still to emit better operationId values from the server. The generator is mainly reflecting what the spec says.
• I would avoid post-processing generated .ts files unless this is a temporary migration, because it is brittle around overloads, extracted types, and regenerated diffs.

So: use a hook for generation-time customization; preprocess operationId only if you want the OpenAPI spec itself to become the source of truth.

If this solves it, please mark the comment as the answer so others can find it faster.

[gravitonlab]

@yudin-s Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation and example this is exactly what I was looking for🥳

The caveats about uniqueness and operationId also make perfect sense. I’ve implemented the hook-based approach and it works well for my case.

Really appreciate your help and the clear guidance🙏