Express Route Visualizer

A lightweight utility to extract and display Express.js application routes in clean format.

Features

• 🧭 Clear route overview: Displays all your API routes in a structured format
• 🔍 Domain filtering: Filter routes by specific domains for focused views
• 🔒 Authentication indicators: Clearly shows which routes are protected
• 📐 Flexible filtering: Filter routes by protection status and custom criteria
• 📊 Easy integration: Works with any Express.js application

Installation

npm install express-route-visualizer

Usage

Basic Usage

const express = require("express");
const { displayRoutes } = require("express-route-visualizer");

const app = express();

// Define your routes
app.get("/api/users", (req, res) => res.send("Get users"));
app.post("/api/users", (req, res) => res.send("Create user"));
app.get("/api/products", (req, res) => res.send("Get products"));

// Display all routes when your app is ready
displayRoutes(app);

With TypeScript

import express from "express";
import { displayRoutes, DisplayRoutesConfig } from "express-route-visualizer";

const app = express();

// Define your routes
app.get("/api/users", (req, res) => res.send("Get users"));
app.post("/api/users", (req, res) => res.send("Create user"));

// Display routes with configuration
const config: DisplayRoutesConfig = {
  filterDomain: "users",
};

displayRoutes(app, config);

Configuration Options

You can customize the route display with the following options:

Option	Type	Default	Description
domainFilter	string | string[]	undefined	Filter routes by domain (e.g., "users" will match "/api/users/*")
showUnprotectedOnly	boolean	false	Only show routes that don't require authentication
isProtected	(route: RouteInfo) => boolean	undefined	Custom function to determine if a route is protected
includeFilter	(route: RouteInfo) => boolean	undefined	Custom function to include only routes that match criteria
excludeFilter	(route: RouteInfo) => boolean	undefined	Custom function to exclude routes that match criteria
protectionMiddlewareName	string | string[]	undefined	Name or names of middleware functions that indicate a protected route

Authentication and Protected Routes

Routes are only marked as protected when you provide either:

1. A custom isProtected function, or
2. A specific middleware name via protectionMiddlewareName

By default, all routes are considered unprotected unless you specify how to identify protected routes.

Example with protectionMiddlewareName

// Specify which middleware indicates a protected route
displayRoutes(app, {
  protectionMiddlewareName: "requiresAuthentication",
});

Example with custom isProtected function

// Use a custom function to determine if routes are protected
displayRoutes(app, {
  isProtected: (route) => {
    // Consider routes with 'admin' in the path as protected
    return route.path.includes("admin") || route.middlewares.some((middleware) => middleware.name === "requiresAuthentication");
  },
});

Example with multiple protection middleware names

// Specify multiple middleware names that indicate protected routes
displayRoutes(app, {
  protectionMiddlewareName: ["requiresAuthentication", "requiresAdmin", "checkJwt"],
});

Advanced Examples

Custom Filtering

// Show only GET routes
displayRoutes(app, {
  includeFilter: (route) => route.method === "GET",
});

// Exclude auth routes
displayRoutes(app, {
  excludeFilter: (route) => route.path.includes("/auth"),
});

// Custom protection detection
displayRoutes(app, {
  isProtected: (route) => {
    // Consider routes with 'admin' in the path as protected
    return route.path.includes("/admin") || route.middlewares.some((middleware) => middleware.name === "requireAuth");
  },
});

Filtering by Multiple Domains

// Show routes from multiple domains
displayRoutes(app, {
  filterDomain: ["users", "products"],
});

Development

Linting

# Run linting
npm run lint

Running Tests

# Run tests
npm test

CI/CD

This project uses GitHub Actions for continuous integration. The following checks run on each push to main and pull request:

• Linting (ESLint)
• Type checking (TypeScript)
• Building the project
• Running tests

You can see the status of these checks in the GitHub repository under the "Actions" tab.

License

MIT