What is oxpress?

Do you like TypeScript, Express and OpenAPI and use those tools for API development?

Then oxpress is made for you. Oxpress is a code generation tool, which generates a type-safe Express server based on your OpenAPI Document.

How?

Oxpress combines packages out of the Node.JS OpenAPI world. These are:

• openapi-typescript, for generating the types in your OpenAPI document
• express-openapi-validator, for validating requests and responses from your express server

Goals

Easy to use

And that is not just a catchphrase. Run the following command in your project and you are ready to go:

npx oxpress init

Then run the following command to generate the types for your express server:

npx oxpress generate

Integrates seamlessly into your current project

If you are already using express and want a more typed experience, you can use oxpress to incrementally adapt to a type safe express server. The API is exactly the same as express, so it is easy to adapt oxpress, or if you don't like it, to remove it.

Design First Approach

Unlike other tools like tsoa, oxpress fully embraces the design first kind of API development.

To sum this up: The design first approach puts the OpenAPI Document first, and your server just becomes an implementation of your specification.

Type Safety

OpenAPI makes you able to describe your API in great detail. Why not have this amount of detail within your Express-Application? The following parts of Express are fully typed by oxpress:

• Routes
• Route Parameters
• Query Parameters
• Request Body (JSON)
• Response Body (JSON), in conjunction with the Status Code

Integrated Validation

Oxpress uses express-openapi-validator by default to validate parameters. This ensures, that your beautifully typed parameters and responses are also type safe during runtime.

Attributions

Ox icon in Logo made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com