benjaminolmsted / json-server-template

JSON Server Template

Setup

Fork and clone this repo. Then install the dependencies by running:

npm install

Seeding Data

To set up your database, update the db/seeds.json file to contain an object with a key pointing to an array of data, like this:

{
  "toys": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Woody",
      "image": "http://www.pngmart.com/files/3/Toy-Story-Woody-PNG-Photos.png",
      "likes": 8
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "Buzz Lightyear",
      "image": "http://www.pngmart.com/files/6/Buzz-Lightyear-PNG-Transparent-Picture.png",
      "likes": 14
    }
  ]
}

Then, run npm run seed to copy data from the db/seeds.json file to the db/db.json file. json-server uses the db.json file to create your RESTful API, so make sure your db.json file is always up to date!

Any time you want to reset your database back to your original data, run npm run seed again. Doing this will overwrite all the data in your db.json file, so make sure you don't have any data in that file that you don't mind losing!

Running the Server Locally

To run your server in development mode, run:

npm run dev

While running in development mode, the server will re-load any time you make changes to the db.json file, so you can test our your seed data.

While your server is running, you can make requests to http://localhost:3000. Check it out in the browser to make sure your server works!

Deploying the Server

Free services like Heroku make it simple to deploy your Node server. Heroku also works nicely with Rails, which you'll learn later in the program.

First, download the Heroku CLI.

Then, deploy your app.

Since Heroku deployment integrates with your git repo, you can easily deploy changes to your database. To deploy changes, make sure to commit your code:

git add .
git commit -m "Updated database"

Then push your main/default branch up to Heroku:

git push heroku main