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

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.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 saved to db.json using lowdb.

Based on the previous db.json file, here are all the available routes. If you need to customize, you can use the project as a module.

GET    /posts
GET    /posts/1
GET    /posts/1/comments
GET    /posts?title=json-server&author=typicode
POST   /posts
PUT    /posts/1
PATCH  /posts/1
DELETE /posts/1

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 /

$ npm install -g json-server

You can use JSON Server to serve your HTML, JS and CSS, simply create a ./public directory.

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

You can use JS to programmatically create data:

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

If you need to add authentication, validation, rewrite or add routes, 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 add more routes, use redirections or rewrite middlewares.

// Add this before server.use(router)
// Will make /posts/1 available under /blog/posts/1
server.use('/blog/posts/:id', function (req, res) {
  res.redirect('/posts/' + req.params.id)
})

To set a global prefix, mount the router on another point.

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
• 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

• Grunt JSON Server
• Docker JSON Server
• JSON Server GUI

MIT - Typicode