JSON Server

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.

Example

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.

Install

$ npm install -g json-server

Routes

Based on the previous db.json file, here are all the default routes. You can also add other routes using --routes.

Plural routes

GET    /posts
GET    /posts/1
POST   /posts
PUT    /posts/1
PATCH  /posts/1
DELETE /posts/1

Singular routes

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

Filter

Use . to access deep properties

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

Slice

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

Sort

Add _sort and _order (ascending order by default)

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

Operators

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

Full-text search

Add q

GET /posts?q=internet

Relationships

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

Database

GET /db

Homepage

Returns default index file or serves ./public directory

GET /

Extras

Static file server

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

Access from anywhere

You can access your fake API from anywhere using CORS and JSONP.

Remote schema

You can load remote schemas.

$ json-server http://example.com/file.json
$ json-server http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/db

Generate random data

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.

Add routes

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

Module

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)

Deployment

You can deploy JSON Server. For example, JSONPlaceholder is an online fake API powered by JSON Server and running on Heroku.

Links

Video

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

Articles

• 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

Third-party tools

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

License

MIT - Typicode