Building REST APIs with Express

Express is the de-facto standard for building REST APIs in Node.js. It's minimal, flexible, and has a rich ecosystem of middleware.

Setup

npm init -y
npm install express

Basic Structure

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

app.get('/api/posts', (req, res) => {
  res.json({ posts: [] });
});

app.post('/api/posts', (req, res) => {
  const post = req.body;
  res.status(201).json(post);
});

app.listen(3000);

Route Parameters

app.get('/api/posts/:id', (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;
  res.json({ id });
});

Middleware

Middleware functions run before your route handlers. Use them for logging, auth, validation, error handling, and more.