Get a full fake REST API with zero coding in less than 30 seconds (seriously)
Created with <3 for front-end developers who need a quick back-end for prototyping and mocking.
- Egghead.io free video tutorial - Creating demo APIs with json-server
- JSONPlaceholder - Live running version
See also hotel, a simple server manager.
Create a db.json file
{
"posts": [
{ "id": 1, "title": "json-server", "author": "typicode" }
],
"comments": [
{ "id": 1, "body": "some comment", "postId": 1 }
]
}Start JSON Server
$ json-server --watch db.jsonNow if you go to http://localhost:3000/posts/1, you'll get
{ "id": 1, "title": "json-server", "author": "typicode" }Also, if you make POST, PUT, PATCH or DELETE requests, changes will be automatically and safely saved to db.json using lowdb.
$ npm install -g json-serverBased on the previous db.json file, here are all the default routes. You can also add other routes using --routes.
GET /posts
GET /posts/1
GET /posts/1/comments
POST /posts
PUT /posts/1
PATCH /posts/1
DELETE /posts/1
To filter resources (use . to access deep properties)
GET /posts?title=json-server&author=typicode
GET /comments?author.name=typicode
To slice resources, add _start and _end or _limit (an X-Total-Count header is included in the response).
GET /posts?_start=20&_end=30
GET /posts/1/comments?_start=20&_end=30
To sort resources, add _sort and _order (ascending order by default).
GET /posts?_sort=views&_order=DESC
GET /posts/1/comments?_sort=votes&_order=ASC
To make a full-text search on resources, add q.
GET /posts?q=internet
To embed other resources, add _embed.
GET /posts/1?_embed=comments
Returns database.
GET /db
Returns default index file or serves ./public directory.
GET /
You can use JSON Server to serve your HTML, JS and CSS, simply create a ./public directory.
mkdir public
echo 'hello word' > public/index.html
json-server db.jsonYou can access your fake API from anywhere using CORS and JSONP.
You can load remote schemas.
$ json-server http://example.com/file.json
$ json-server http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/dbUsing JS instead of a JSON file, you can create data programmatically.
// index.js
module.exports = function() {
var data = { users: [] }
// Create 1000 users
for (var i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
data.users.push({ id: i, name: 'user' + i })
}
return data
}$ json-server index.jsTip use modules like faker, casual or chance.
Create a routes.json file.
{
"/api/": "/",
"/blog/:resource/:id/show": "/:resource/:id"
}Start JSON Server with --routes option.
json-server db.json --routes routes.jsonNow you can access resources using additional routes.
/api/posts
/api/posts/1
/blog/posts/1/showIf you need to add authentication, validation, you can use the project as a module in combination with other Express middlewares.
var jsonServer = require('json-server')
// Returns an Express server
var server = jsonServer.create()
// Set default middlewares (logger, static, cors and no-cache)
server.use(jsonServer.defaults)
// Returns an Express router
var router = jsonServer.router('db.json')
server.use(router)
server.listen(3000)For an in-memory database, you can pass an object to jsonServer.router().
Please note also that jsonServer.router() can be used in existing Express projects.
To modify responses, use router.render():
// In this example, returned resources will be wrapped in a body property
router.render = function (req, res) {
res.jsonp({
body: res.locals.data
})
}To add rewrite rules, use jsonServer.rewriter():
// Add this before server.use(router)
server.use(jsonServer.rewriter({
'/api/': '/',
'/blog/:resource/:id/show': '/:resource/:id'
}))Alternatively, you can also mount the router on another path.
server.use('/api', router)You can deploy JSON Server. For example, JSONPlaceholder is an online fake API powered by JSON Server and running on Heroku.
- Node Module Of The Week - json-server
- Mock up your REST API with JSON Server
- how to build quick json REST APIs for development
- ng-admin: Add an AngularJS admin GUI to any RESTful API
- Fast prototyping using Restangular and Json-server
MIT - Typicode