Setup a jsonapi mock server in almost no time! Uses lowdb⚡️

Usage and 'installing'

Since I plan on updating this as much as possible, use npx instead of installing it via npm globally. You can use npx already if you have npm@^5.2.0.

npx jsonapi-mock

OR (not recommended!)

npm install jsonapi-mock -g

Run this in your project folder

jsonapi-mock

Run it in the directory of the .json file you want to use as a db (i.e, your project root), otherwise it'll generate a dummy one with some sample data. Make sure your dummy data is compliant with the jsonapi spec though, see db.json in this repo for more info on that.

Flags

Flag	Description	Default
--help	shows help with all the flags available	N/A
-w or --watch	watches a .json file to use as a db	db.json
-p or --port	what port the server should use	3004

Route params and usage

Let's take the route /posts/posts2 for our example. If we want to get all posts2 we would do a

GET /posts/posts2/

Responds with a 404 if the route /posts2/posts2/ is not found. This is most likely caused by invalid route prefixing for nested routes.
Responds with a 200 if success and all the posts2 posts.

If we want to create a post2 we would do a

POST /posts/posts2/
{
  "data": {
    "type": "posts2",
    "attributes": {
      "title": "JSONAPI mock is handy!",
      "description": "But there's already so many alternatives.."
    }
  }
}

Responds with a 400 if invalid body
Responds with a 200 and the newly created post if success

If we want to edit a post2 post we would do a PATCH request, 6b7c4631-927d-454b-885b-8b908e19b9c1 being the ID of the item we want to change.

PATCH /posts/posts2/6b7c4631-927d-454b-885b-8b908e19b9c1
{
  "data": {
    "attributes": {
      "title": "JSON api paints my bikeshed!",
      "description": "It really does! Also the shortest post, we edited this! Yay!"
    }
  }
}

Responds with a 400 if invalid body
Responds with a 200 and the new edited post if success
If we want to remove a post2 post we would do a DELETE request, same as a PATCH request as in that you have to pass along an ID at the end of the route as a parameter.

DELETE /posts/posts2/6b7c4631-927d-454b-885b-8b908e19b9c1

Responds with a 204 if success.
Responds with a 404 if the id of the item is not found

Nested routes and expected structure from your watchfile (so your .json file acting as a DB)

For a non-nested route you would declare your watchfile something like this:
This is the structure we expect coming from the jsonapi spec, so nothing abnormal here, this structure has 1 route and that's /posts.

{
    "posts": {
        "data": [
            {
                "type": "posts",
                "id": "fcd856e4-2b35-4e18-abf7-41920cef39de",
                "attributes": {
                    "title": "Lorem ipsum",
                    "description": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Animi dicta dolorum officia sapiente. Ad alias, enim itaque iure libero maxime minus nemo, non nulla, officiis quia saepe totam veritatis voluptatem."
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

For a nested route setup it's slightly different:

{
    "route:posts": {
        "route:posts2": {
            "data": [
                {
                    "type": "posts2",
                    "id": "6b7c4631-927d-454b-885b-8b908e19b9c1",
                    "attributes": {
                        "title": "Lorem ipsum",
                        "description": "Lorem ipsummmmmm dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Animi dicta dolorum officia sapiente. Ad alias, enim itaque iure libero maxime minus nemo, non nulla, officiis quia saepe totam veritatis voluptatem."
                    }
                }
            ]
        },
        "data": [
            {
                "type": "posts",
                "id": "fcd856e4-2b35-4e18-abf7-41920cef39de",
                "attributes": {
                    "title": "Lorem ipsum",
                    "description": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Animi dicta dolorum officia sapiente. Ad alias, enim itaque iure libero maxime minus nemo, non nulla, officiis quia saepe totam veritatis voluptatem."
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

You might notice the route: prefix on all of the routes, this is to determine whether a key in the current object is a route or not. The default prefix is route: but you can change the prefix via the configuration file (.jsonapimockrc)
This nesting can go infinitely deep (well, as far as your .json filesize allows).

Configuration

You can configurate jsonapi-mock via an .jsonapimockrc file in your project root (so the directory where you're executing the npx jsonapi-mock command). Here's an example configuration with all the possible options:

{
  "port": 3006,
  "watch": "db2.json",
  "nestedRoutePrefix": "route-"
  "contentType": 'application/json',
  "accept": '*/*'
}

The defaults are:

{
  "port": 3004,
  "watch": "db.json",
  "nestedRoutePrefix": "route:"
  "contentType": 'application/vnd.api+json',
  "accept": 'application/vnd.api+json'
}

Motivation

I searched for days to find a good and dead simple jsonapi mock server, all of them required me to do all kinds of crazy stuff and learn their complicated API. I saw json-server and really liked the concept of just defining your routes and some sample data and you're good to go.

Why?

Simple. The concept of this project is; Keep it simple like json-server, but with jsonapi support and more neat features on top of json-server. Plus I didn't find anything that was up to my needs in terms of simplicity and wanted a challenge for myself

Contributing

If you find something that you think should be in the project or want to have a go at contributing, open an issue or make a PR!

To do

why this package above something that's more extensive than json-server? ✅
check return values and status codes on different methods (PATCH, DELETE) etc.. ✅
query operators on routes, sorting etc
nested routes ✅
better faulty nested route declaration detection instead of throwing an HTTP 404 error
proper dummy file with nested and not nested routes. and write documentation for nested routes. ✅
config .jsonapimock or in package.json 'jsonapimockConfig' for changing the nested route prefix, the accept and content type ,although you really shouldn't change the accept or content type header ;) ✅
better status code responses compliant to jsonapi spec 🚧
add links, relationships, included, self and meta support
improve project structure ✅
write documentation for using .jsonapimockrc config ✅
parameters and operators on routes🚧
keep improving docs 🚧
add faker flag/possibility for faking data and generating all the dummy data you want
add more examples in docs 🚧
if header is not jsonapi compliant, return error with status code 415 ✅
check if db.json is valid jsonapi.org spec on load
put all errors in an errorIndex so they're nice and convenient to access and read.
add more fun stuff

ssuperczynski / jsonapi-mock