Installing Express

Installing Express

Before you install Express, make sure you have Node.js 20 or later. Start by initialising a new project and installing Express as a production dependency.

mkdir my-api && cd my-api
npm init -y
npm install express

If you are using TypeScript — which CPCODELAB recommends for all backend projects — you should also install the type definitions for Express.

npm install --save-dev typescript @types/node @types/express ts-node-dev
npx tsc --init

Your package.json scripts section should look like this for a TypeScript development workflow.

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "ts-node-dev --respawn src/index.ts",
    "build": "tsc",
    "start": "node dist/index.js"
  }
}