Learn How to Create a Simple REST API with Node.js & Express!

If you’re looking to build a simple REST API using Node.js and Express, then you’re in the right place. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the process of creating a basic RESTful API using these popular JavaScript frameworks.

What is a REST API?

REST stands for Representational State Transfer and is an architectural style for building networked applications. A RESTful API is an application program interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is a way of allowing two software applications to communicate with each other over the internet.

Setting Up Node.js & Express

Before we can start building our REST API, we need to have Node.js and Express installed on our system. You can download and install Node.js from the official website, and then install Express using npm, which is the Node.js package manager.

    
      $ npm install express
    
  

Creating a Simple REST API

Once we have Node.js and Express set up, we can start building our RESTful API. We’ll create a simple API that allows us to perform CRUD operations on a list of items.

    
      // Import Express
      const express = require('express');

      // Create an instance of Express
      const app = express();

      // Define our data
      let items = [
        { id: 1, name: 'Item 1' },
        { id: 2, name: 'Item 2' },
        { id: 3, name: 'Item 3' }
      ];

      // Define our routes
      app.get('/items', (req, res) => {
        res.json(items);
      });

      app.post('/items', (req, res) => {
        const newItem = req.body;
        items.push(newItem);
        res.json(newItem);
      });

      app.put('/items/:id', (req, res) => {
        const id = req.params.id;
        const updatedItem = req.body;
        // Update the item in our data with id
        res.json(updatedItem);
      });

      app.delete('/items/:id', (req, res) => {
        const id = req.params.id;
        // Delete the item from our data with id
        res.json({});
      });

      // Start the server
      app.listen(3000, () => {
        console.log('Server is running on port 3000');
      });
    
  

With the above code, we have defined our routes for getting, creating, updating, and deleting items from our list. We can now start our Node.js server and test our API using a tool like Postman.

Conclusion

Creating a simple REST API using Node.js and Express is a great way to get started with building backend services for your web applications. You can expand on this tutorial by adding authentication, validation, and more complex data models to your API. We hope this tutorial has been helpful in getting you started with Node.js and Express.