Installing Express

You don’t need a generator for Express. The minimum-viable setup is three commands.

Step 1 — Create the Project

mkdir my-api
cd my-api
npm init -y

npm init -y creates package.json with sensible defaults.

Step 2 — Set Module Type

Open package.json and add "type": "module":

{
  "name": "my-api",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "type": "module",
  "main": "src/index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "node --watch src/index.js"
  }
}

"type": "module" lets you use import instead of require.

Step 3 — Install Express

npm install express

For Express 5 specifically:

npm install express@5

(At time of writing, express@latest is Express 5 — but pinning is safer.)

Step 4 — Write the Server

// src/index.js
import express from "express";

const app = express();

app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Hello, Express!");
});

const port = 3000;
app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Server running at http://localhost:${port}`);
});

Step 5 — Run

npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:3000 — you should see “Hello, Express!”. With --watch, the server auto-restarts on file changes.

The Express Generator

For larger scaffolds, there’s npx express-generator — it spits out a Pug-templated project with the older Express 4 conventions. We skip it; the hand-rolled setup above is cleaner for modern apps.

TypeScript Setup

Adding TypeScript? Install:

npm install --save-dev typescript @types/node @types/express tsx

Then run with npx tsx src/index.ts. We cover this more deeply in the TypeScript track.