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 process manager for web developers.

Create a db.json file

{ "posts": [ { "id": 1, "title": "json-server", "author": "typicode" } ], "comments": [ { "id": 1, "body": "some comment", "postId": 1 } ], "profile": { "name": "typicode" } }

Start JSON Server

$ json-server --watch db.json

Now 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-server

Based 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 POST /posts PUT /posts/1 PATCH /posts/1 DELETE /posts/1 

GET /profile POST /profile PUT /profile PATCH /profile 

Use . to access deep properties

GET /posts?title=json-server&author=typicode GET /posts?id=1&id=2 GET /comments?author.name=typicode 

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 GET /posts/1/comments?_start=20&_limit=10 

Add _sort and _order (ascending order by default)

GET /posts?_sort=views&_order=DESC GET /posts/1/comments?_sort=votes&_order=ASC 

Add _gte or _lte for getting a range

GET /posts?views_gte=10&views_lte=20 

Add _ne to exclude a value

GET /posts?id_ne=1 

Add _like to filter using RegExp

GET /posts?title_like=server 

Add q

GET /posts?q=internet 

To include children resources, add _embed

GET /posts?_embed=comments GET /posts/1?_embed=comments 

To include parent resource, add _expand

GET /comments?_expand=post GET /comments/1?_expand=post 

To get or create nested resources (by default one level, add routes for more)

GET /posts/1/comments POST /posts/1/comments 

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 or use --static.

mkdir public echo 'hello word' > public/index.html json-server db.json

json-server db.json --static ./static

You 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/db

Using 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.js

Tip 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.json

Now you can access resources using additional routes.

/api/posts /api/posts/1 /blog/posts/1/show

If 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()) // Add custom routes // server.get('/custom', function (req, res) { res.json({ msg: 'hello' }) }) // 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.

• Creating Demo APIs with json-server on egghead.io

• Node Module Of The Week - json-server
• Mock up your REST API with JSON Server
• ng-admin: Add an AngularJS admin GUI to any RESTful API
• Fast prototyping using Restangular and Json-server

• Grunt JSON Server
• Docker JSON Server
• JSON Server GUI
• JSON file generator

MIT - Typicode