From Manual Typing to Full Automation: Type-Safe REST Integrations with TSOA and Orval

10/7/2025

Stop Doing Boilerplate: Building Scalable React Apps with TanStack Query and Orval

Every frontend developer knows the pain: writing endless Axios calls, maintaining type definitions by hand, and keeping frontend services in sync with backend changes. It’s repetitive, error-prone, and slows down development.

Fortunately, tools like TSOA, TanStack Query, and Orval make it possible to automate nearly the entire process — from backend endpoint generation to frontend data fetching hooks — all while keeping your app type-safe, modular, and maintainable.

🚀 The Stack

Backend: TSOA + Express
Frontend: React + TanStack Query + Orval

This setup enables an API-first, type-safe, and auto-synced development flow. Here’s how it works:

🧩 How It Works

TSOA automatically generates an OpenAPI specification from your backend controllers and models.
Orval uses that OpenAPI spec to generate:
- TypeScript models
- Fully typed React hooks
- Built-in TanStack Query integration
The frontend instantly gets reusable, type-safe hooks such as:
```
 const { data, isLoading } = useGetUserList();
```
No need to write Axios calls, handle responses manually, or maintain separate type definitions.

⚡ Benefits

Zero manual type management — all models come directly from your backend.
Auto-generated data hooks — no need for custom service layers.
Instant backend–frontend sync — any change in your backend automatically reflects in the frontend.
Reduced cognitive load — focus on UI and business logic, not plumbing.

Development time drops dramatically, and consistency across your stack improves significantly.

🧠 Works Great with AI-Assisted Development

If you’re using AI-powered tools like Cursor or GitHub Copilot, this setup becomes even more powerful.
Because Orval provides strong, predictable types and models, your AI assistant doesn’t have to guess what you mean — it knows.

You can simply prompt:

“Create a form using the UserModel”
or
“Fetch data using useGetOrders and render it in a table.”

The AI will generate accurate, working code because your project already defines everything clearly.

🧱 Similar to Apollo Codegen (but for REST)

If you’ve used Apollo Codegen with GraphQL, you’ll feel right at home.
Orval + TSOA provides the same experience for REST APIs — fully automated, strongly typed, and easy to maintain.

📘 Getting Started

You can explore Orval’s official React documentation here:
👉 https://orval.dev/guides/react-query

🧭 Final Thoughts

If you’re still manually writing types, API calls, and hooks, it’s time to upgrade your workflow.
With TSOA + Orval + TanStack Query, you’ll:

Save hours of boilerplate coding,
Eliminate type mismatches,
And keep your frontend perfectly aligned with your backend.

Stop writing glue code — start writing real features.