JSX on the Backend?!

Hi!

Recently I had an idea how to improve the development experience when creating NodeJS servers (in particular, with express). But first I would like to explain some problems I see with barebones express apps:

1) lack of API documentation. You need to learn/integrate Swagger or API Blueprint to get proper API docs
2) lack of automatic input/output validation. With JavaScript, it's a bit hard to control if everything is properly typed. You need to write validation yourself or employ some validator libs or JSON schema validators.
3) low discoverability. No easy way to generate client code with types and validation.

What I thought would be cool is to have a standard format to define all aspects of a server with HTTP API. This format should be simple and not entirely new. So I thought that JSX is excellent for this. With JSX a typical server looks like this:

<Service
  id="hello-world-service"
  port={3000}
  version="0.1.0"
  contact="orkon"
  tags={['node', 'service']}
  endpoint="http://dev.server.at.home"
>
  <Middleware use={require('./middleware/logger')} />
  <Group name="Hello" description="All routes related to saying Hello">
    <Route
      description={'Generates a message in the format "Hello :who!"'}
      path="/hello/:who"
      method="get"
      handler={require('./handlers/getHello')}>
      <Request>
        <PathParameter name="who" type="string" />
      </Request>
      <Response schema={require('./schemas/getHello.res.json')} />
    </Route>
  </Group>
</Service>

const server = getExpressServer(compile(__dirname + '/definition.jsx'));

server.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('server started');
});

The cool things I see about it:

• easy to read (especially if you are familiar with JSX/React)
• easier to compose different APIs
• connects implementation with documentation
• allows generating input/output validators thanks to JSON Schema
• allows generating proper API docs
• allows discovering how to invoke the service
• hides the underlying framework (it can be express, koa, etc.)
• behind the JSX it is just plain JS classes/objects, so the use of JSX is optional

Project URL: https://github.com/OrKoN/api-express

Do you think it's a good idea?