52 lines
1 KiB
Markdown
52 lines
1 KiB
Markdown
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---
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tags:
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- Programming_Languages
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- backend
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- node-js
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- express
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- REST
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- apis
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---
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# Creating a REST API with Node and Express: Introduction
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We are going to use Express to create a [RESTful API](/Databases/RESTful_APIs.md) in Node.js.
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## Request types
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Express provides us with methods corresponding to each of the [HTTP request types](/Databases/HTTP_request_types.md):
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* `app.get()`
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* `app.post()`
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* `app.put()`
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* `app.delete()`
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## Creating an Express instance
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````js
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const express = require('express')
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const app = express()
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````
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## Our data set
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> Typically when you create a RESTful API you are going to be returning data from a database. For simplicity we are just going simulate this with a simple data array so that we can focus on the Express syntax rather than database handling.
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We will mainly work with the following array of objects:
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````js
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const courses = [
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{
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id: 1,
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name: "First course",
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},
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{
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id: 2,
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name: "Second course",
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},
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{
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id: 3,
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name: "Third course",
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},
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];
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````
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