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Writing your own API Server

On some cases where json-server is not flexible enough to make a mock server. You may also implement a quick API server on your own

express

express (https://expressjs.com) is one of the oldest and most mature web frameworks in node.js. For this tutorial, we will be using express to create a API server. To install:

npm install --save express

Creating a quick API server

Create a new file called hello.js with this following contents:

let express = require('express')
let app = express()

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
    res.json({"message": "Hello, world!"});
});

app.listen(3000, function () { console.log("API Server listening on port 3000") });

Save and then run:

node hello.js

Your server should be accessible from http://localhost:3000/

Express Generator

The example above is a very simple demonstration of express. In order for you to create a full fledged API server project, you would need organization and a lot of scaffolding. In order to fast track this, express has a helper utility called express-generator (https://github.com/expressjs/generator). To install:

npm install -g express-generator

Now we can create a new expressjs project by running:

express training
cd training
npm install
npm start

It will create a boilerplate code with default routes for / and /users. It will also create a organized directory structure for your project:

express

Tying it all together

For this exercise, we will run through src/api folder. This is an implementation of an API server that implements all you have learned throughout this training.

The API Server uses the following:

  • express - as the web framework
  • sequelize - as the data access layer
  • mysql - as the database backend