Node API Server Starter Kit

This starter kit contains everything you'll need to create your very own Node-based API server, using Express and configured to serve JSON files for data. It's all wrapped up in a nice little TypeScript package for you.

Why an API server that serves JSON files?

Driven, as always, by the need to solve a problem I had on how to create a dummy API server that could return various bits of data in a realistic fashion (thus, removing the need to hard code everything), I went down the path of creating a dual project: one for the main React app I was using, with an attached API server using Express (i.e. this project).

Using the API server

I'll run over the basics here to get you up and running, but I wrote an accompanying article on this very tool that is much more comprehensive and covers many more use cases. You can read the full Node-based API server article on my website.

Getting started

First things first, you'll need to fork or clone this repository, and run the install command of your choosing (preferrably pnpm):

pnpm install

And that's really about it (see, I said it was simple!). To fire up the server and have it do stuff, you'll need to start it with the familiar command:

pnpm start

Accessing the server and returning data

The server should be running by now, and you can visit http://localhost:8080 to see it in action.

By default, it doesn't return a great deal, but if you visit http://localhost:8080/users -- which will automatically issue a GET request to our running API server -- you'll see a simple JSON object populated with some dummy user data.

Module aliases

You'll notice that we have some convenient path imports dotted around the place, such as in the server/routes/users.ts file. We reference @controllers/users right at the top of the file, but how is this working. Well, TypeScript gives us a nice paths property in the tsconfig.json file that we can use to reference longer, upper folder chains using a shortcut string. For example, instead of import thing from '../../../../path/to/module, we can user import thing from '@modules/thing.

We add in our aliases in the tsconfig.json file like this:

"paths": {
  "@controllers/*": ["./server/controllers/*"],
  "@routes/*": ["./server/routes/*"],
  "@data/*": ["./data/*"]
}

However, because we're in a pure Node environment, this won't work when it comes to running the project. Sad times 😭. This is because of how the module resolution works within Node and because we're using nodemon to run our server. If we were using a packager or bundler like Rollup, Vite, or Webpack, we'd be set.

In our case, we're using the fabulous Module Aliases project which helps us get around the path aliases issue in Node environments.

This requires a little extra work in that we have to import the project into our root file, server.ts, like this:

import 'module-alias/register';

Next, we have to duplcate our module paths into our package.json file like this:

"_moduleAliases": {
  "@controllers": "./server/controllers",
  "@routes": "./server/routes",
  "@data": "./data"
},

If you want to expand on this starter kit and add new module alias paths, then just keep this in mind 👍.

Expanding the server

This starter kit is really designed as a kick off point for your own API adventures. If you would like to extend the functionality for your own purposes then you need to do these three things:

Add a new JSON file with your relevant data to the main data entry point for the project, ./data.
Add a new controller file into ./server/controllers/[your controller file].ts -- this is where you'll physically handle interacting with files or retrieving data.
Add a route file that will access this controller and define your routes into ./server/routes/[your route file].ts -- hint: use the ./server/routes/users.ts as a guide.
Add your new route file into the main routes file located at ./server/routes/index.ts.