NodeJS | Building simple REST API in express

Let’s have a brief introduction about the Express framework before starting the code section:

Express: It is an open source NodeJs web application framework designed to develop websites, web applications and APIs in a pretty easier way.
Express helps us to handle different HTTP requests at specific routes.

As it is NodeJs web framework so make sure that NodeJs has been installed at our system.

For verifying type following command in the terminal:

node -v

It will show the installed version of NodeJs to our system as shown in the below screenshot.

Steps to be performed for building a simple REST API:

STEP-1:
Create a separate folder and with the help of terminal or command prompt navigate to this folder:
STEP-2:
Create package.json by typing following command in the terminal:
```
npm init -y
```
For knowing more about package.json click here.

STEP-3:
Create a file named server.js at the root of the project.
Now, our folder structure will be as shown in the screenshot below:

// server.js File 
const express = require('express'); // Importing express module 
  
const app = express(); // Creating an express object 
  
const port = 8000;  // Setting an port for this application 
  
  
// Starting server using listen function 
app.listen(port, function (err) { 
   if(err){ 
       console.log("Error while starting server"); 
   } 
   else{ 
       console.log("Server has been started at "+port); 
   } 
}) 

STEP-4:
Start server by typing following command in the terminal:
```
node server.js
```
STEP-5:
Open the browser and type http://localhost:8000 and we will get the following response.

We are getting Cannot GET / response as we are trying to access/route to the server and there is nothing mounted to that particular route.
STEP-6: Handing the route to server
Handle the root route of the server by sending something back to it and adding the following code to the server.js
```
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.send('we are at the root route of our server');
})
```
Now, restart the server by typing following command :
```
node server.js
```

Source code explanation:

By using this line of code we are importing the Express package.

const express = require('express'); // Importing express package

By using this line of code we are creating an Express object, this object instance will be stored in app variable and then functions will be called over this object.

const app = express(); // Creating an object

const port = 8000;  // Defining port to 8000

By using these lines we are listening server at port number 8000. Here the first parameter is port and the second parameter is a function for handling the error.

app.listen(port, function(err){ 
if(err){ 
console.log("Error while starting server"); 
} 
else{ 
console.log("Server has been started at "+port"); 
} 
}) 

By using these lines we are handing root route of the server and sending a GET request to it with a specific message.

app.get('/', function(req, res){
res.send('We are at the root route of our server');
})

Complete code for REST API is as:

const express = require('express'); 
  
const app = express(); 
const port = 8000; 
  
app.listen(port, function (err) { 
    if(err){ 
        console.log("error while starting server"); 
    } 
    else{ 
        console.log("server has been started at "+port); 
    } 
}) 
  
app.get('/', function (req, res) { 
   res.send('we are at the root route of our server'); 
}) 

In this way, we can create a simple server using the Express web framework.

My Personal Notes

Jul	AUG	Sep
	22
2018	2019	2020

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