Migrate server code to server/index.ts and simplify processes

[kasperpeulen]

When reviewing the code, I noticed custom build stuff that seemed unnecessary. It made me feel that react-router needs a lot of boilerplate, and custom stuff build scripts.

I looked at the best practices in react router:
https://github.com/remix-run/react-router-templates/tree/main/node-custom-server

And I concluded that the epic-stack does custom things that are not necessary.

This gets rid of:

• The custom esbuild for the server files in other/build-server.ts
• The custom dev-server in server/dev-server.js
• The build:server command

For running the server files with ts without compilation or tsx, node 22.18 is needed, so I updated that requirement.

They could also easily be js files, as they contain very little types. That is what is done in the react-router-templates, but running TS through node for those 2 files, seems complety valid to me in modern code.

Test Plan

build, dev, dev:no-mocks, start and start:mocks commands should still work the same way

I tested all of them manually.

Checklist

• Tests updated
• Docs updated

Screenshots

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[kentcdodds]

This is awesome! How is it done? I thought type stripping was only available without flags in node v25.

In any case, I absolutely love this if it works!

[kasperpeulen]

https://nodejs.org/en/learn/typescript/run-natively

It was backported to Node 22 :)

[kentcdodds]

That's just fantastic. Thanks!

[davidesigner]

@kasperpeulen I think introducing the middleware to the server/index.ts file has caused a bug.

This code:

// no ending slashes for SEO reasons
// https://github.com/epicweb-dev/epic-stack/discussions/108
app.get('*', (req, res, next) => {
	if (req.path.endsWith('/') && req.path.length > 1) {
		const query = req.url.slice(req.path.length)
		const safepath = req.path.slice(0, -1).replace(/\/+/g, '/')
		res.redirect(302, safepath + query)
	} else {
		next()
	}
})

It should be moved before the if (IS_DEV) that you added.

Perhaps other middleware should be moved too (I'm not sure)?

[davidesigner]

Also, mocks are not loaded during npm run dev... I think we should change for: "dev": "cross-env NODE_ENV=development MOCKS=true node index.ts",. What do you think about that?

[kasperpeulen]

Fixed here @davidesigner
#1076