yueerchen / jr-posts-api

A detailed step by step guide for making a basic express server

jr-posts-api-walkthrough

The purpose of this project is to gain some practical experience on how to build an basic API server with Express.js, by achieving the following tasks:

• build up a basic express server with GET, POST, PUT, DELETE methods

• utilise middleware

• structure the project, so it's more maintainable and clean

There is no database in this project, memory used to mimic the data storage

Live demo

Web Interface

API Docs (Swagger)

Journey begins

0. Setup

• simply fork this project to start with or create your own

• there are progressive branches for each step listed below, switch to them at your need

1. Basic express server

• init the project and install express

npm init --yes

npm i express

• setup an express server

• build up the server with CRUD operations

2. Create fake data model

• we don't have database, but we will mock one

3. Format our code

• explain a better project structure

• extract common logic to middleware

• extract routes into separate modules

4. Understand the ENV variables

• NODE_ENV

• PORT

• dotenv

5. Other essential packages

• helmet

• morgan

• winston (may not covered)

• cors

6. Deploy

• pm2

• heroku

7. Other topics (explore yourself)

• Swagger
• eslint