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JSONPlaceholder

JSONPlaceholder is a simple fake REST API for testing and prototyping.

It's like an image placeholder but for web developers.

JSONPlaceholder is powered by JSON Server.

Sponsor

Why?

Most of the time when trying a new library, hacking a prototype or following a tutorial, I found myself in need of some data.

I didn't like the idea of using some public API because I had the feeling that I was spending more time registering a client and understanding a complex API than focusing on my task.

But I liked the idea of image placeholders for web designers. So I decided to code a little Express server inspired by that and here is JSONPlaceholder.

You can find it running here and are free to use it in your developments: https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com.

I hope you will find it useful.

Features

  • No registration
  • Zero-config
  • Basic API
  • "Has many" relationships
  • Filters and nested resources
  • Cross-domain (CORS) and JSONP)
  • Supports GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE and OPTIONS verbs
  • Compatible with React, Angular, Vue, Ember, ...

Available resources

Let's start with resources, JSONPlaceholder provides the usual suspects:

How to

Here's some code using fetch api (which is now supported by all major browsers) showing what can be done with JSONPlaceholder.

You can read more about how fetch works using the following links: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/introduction-to-fetch

  • If you are working with a JSON API, you'll need to check the status and parse the JSON for each response.
  • You can simplify your code by defining the status and JSON parsing in separate functions which return promises, freeing you to only worry about handling the final data and the error case.

Common Code for all fetch calls

function status(response) {
  if (response.status >= 200 && response.status < 300) {
    return Promise.resolve(response)
  } else {
    return Promise.reject(new Error(response.statusText))
  }
}

function json(response) {
  return response.json()
}

Showing a resource

fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1')
  .then(status)
  .then(json)
  .then(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.log('Fetch Error :-S', error);
  });

Note: The response of a fetch() request is a Stream object, which means that when we call the json() method, a Promise is returned since the reading of the stream will happen asynchronously.

Listing resources

fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts')
  .then(status)
  .then(json)
  .then(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.log('Fetch Error :-S', error);
  });

Creating a resource

// POST adds a random id to the object sent
fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts', {
    method: 'POST',
    body: JSON.stringify({
      title: 'foo',
      body: 'bar',
      userId: 1
    }),
    headers: {
      "Content-type": "application/json; charset=UTF-8"
    }
  })
  .then(json)
  .then(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.log('Fetch Error :-S', error);
  });

/* will return
{
  id: 101,
  title: 'foo',
  body: 'bar',
  userId: 1
}
*/

Note: the resource will not be really created on the server but it will be faked as if.

Updating a resource

fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1', {
    method: 'PUT',
    body: JSON.stringify({
      id: 1,
      title: 'foo',
      body: 'bar',
      userId: 1
    }),
    headers: {
      "Content-type": "application/json; charset=UTF-8"
    }
  })
  .then(json)
  .then(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.log('Fetch Error :-S', error);
  });

/* will return
{
  id: 1
  title: 'foo',
  body: 'bar',
  userId: 1
}
*/
fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1', {
    method: 'PATCH',
    body: JSON.stringify({
      title: 'foo'
    }),
    headers: {
      "Content-type": "application/json; charset=UTF-8"
    }
  })
  .then(json)
  .then(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.log('Fetch Error :-S', error);
  });

/* will return
{
  id: 1
  title: 'foo',
  body: 'quia et suscipit [...]',
  userId: 1
}
*/

Note: the resource will not be really updated on the server but it will be faked as if.

Deleting a resource

fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1', {
  method: 'DELETE'
});

Note: the resource will not be really deleted on the server but it will be faked as if.

Filtering resources

Basic filtering is supported through query parameters.

// Will return all the posts that belong to the first user
fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts?userId=1')
  .then(status)
  .then(json)
  .then(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.log('Fetch Error :-S', error);
  });

Nested resources

One level of nested route is available.

// equivalent to /comments?postId=1
fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1/comments')
  .then(status)
  .then(json)
  .then(function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .catch(function(error) {
    console.log('Fetch Error :-S', error);
  });

Here's the list of available nested routes: