create-roads

create-roads

A scaffolding tool for Roads.js applications with TypeScript, React, and modern tooling.

Quick Start

# With npm
npm create roads@latest my-app

# With yarn
yarn create roads my-app

# With pnpm
pnpm create roads my-app

Features

• 🚀 Two Templates: Choose between SSR (Server-Side Rendering) or SPA (Single Page Application)
• 📦 Package Manager Detection: Automatically detects and uses your preferred package manager (npm, yarn, pnpm)
• 🎯 TypeScript First: Fully typed codebase with TypeScript configurations
• ⚡ Modern Tooling: Tailwind CSS, ESBuild
• 🛠 Development Ready: Includes build scripts, watchers, and development servers
• 📋 Interactive CLI: Guided setup with validation and progress indicators

Templates

Both templates use roads for server side routing and express as a safe wrapper to handle requests, tailwind for css and react for interactivity. The main difference is how that interactivity is managed.

SSR Template (default)

• Front end "Island" architecture optimized for most apps with standard client side interactivity.
• Renders everything server side then serves the minimum javascript necessary to turn interactive parts interactive.
• Leads to faster load times on devices with slow networks and websites with a lot of different pages.

SPA Template

• Single Page Application with client-side routing for apps with more complex client side interactivity.
• Server-side renders the first page a user lands on, and then sends the whole app up to the client for speedy transitions
• Larger initial load time can speed up page transitions.

Usage

Basic Usage

# Create a new SSR project
create-roads my-ssr-app

# Create a new SPA project
create-roads my-spa-app --template spa

Advanced Options

# Specify template and package manager
create-roads my-app --template spa --pm yarn

# Skip dependency installation
create-roads my-app --skip-install

# Show help
create-roads --help

# Show version
create-roads --version

Available Options

Option	Alias	Description	Values
--template	-t	Choose template type	default, spa
--package-manager	--pm	Package manager to use	npm, yarn, pnpm
--skip-install		Skip dependency installation
--help	-h	Show help message
--version	-v	Show version number

Project Structure

SSR Template Structure

my-app/
├── src/
│   ├── middleware/          # Custom Roads.js middleware
│   ├── projects/
│   │   ├── core/           # Framework utilities
│   │   └── example/        # Example application
│   │       ├── components/ # React components
│   │       └── routes.tsx  # Route definitions
│   └── server.ts           # Server entry point
├── css/                    # Source CSS files
│   └── input.css          # Tailwind input file
├── public/                 # Static assets
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json          # Server-side TypeScript config
└── tsconfig-frontend.json # Client-side TypeScript config

SPA Template Structure

my-app/
├── src/
│   ├── components/        # Shared components
│   ├── core/             # Core utilities (router, etc.)
│   ├── pages/            # Page components
│   └── main.tsx          # Application entry point
├── css/                  # Source CSS files
│   └── input.css        # Tailwind input file
├── public/               # Static assets and HTML
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json         # TypeScript configuration
└── tailwind.config.js    # Tailwind CSS config

Development

SSR Template Commands

# Start development server with auto-restart and file watching
npm run watch-all

# Build TypeScript and start server once
npm start

# Build TypeScript only
npm run build-js

# Build CSS only
npm run build-css

# Watch and rebuild CSS on changes
npm run watch-css

SPA Template Commands

# Start development server (builds and serves)
npm run watch-all

# Build for production
npm run build

# Start static file server only
npm start

# Build JavaScript only
npm run build-js

# Build CSS only
npm run build-css

# Watch and rebuild CSS on changes
npm run watch-css

Requirements

• Node.js: >= 18.0.0
• Package Manager: npm, yarn, or pnpm

License

MIT © Aaron Hedges

Related

• Roads.js - The underlying web framework
• React - UI library
• TypeScript - Type-safe JavaScript
• Tailwind CSS - Utility-first CSS framework