hanna-skeppe / project-express-api

Express API Project

This project is my first backend-project using node.js and Express. The task was to create endpoints using Express for a REST-API using json data, returning both arrays of data and a single item. For the project I used data about books and created an API with the following endpoints:

• Root: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/

Path-params:

• All books: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books
• Books by specific author (not case-sesitive). Example: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/author/auster
• Books in a specific language (by language-code). Example: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/language/fre
• One book by id. Example: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/id/275
• One book by ISBN or ISBN13. Example: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/isbn/140097317
• List of top-rated 100 books: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/ratings/top100

Query-params:

• Query by title and/or author. Examples: Only author: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/?author=auster Only title: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/?title=moon Title and author: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/?title=moon&author=auster
• Query book-list by page-index (default page-size is 20 books per page). Example: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/?page=22
• Query book-list by page-index & page-size. Example: https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/books/?page=22&pageSize=10

The process

First I tried to imagine how a user would like to use this data and what kind of data the user would want to find, and based o the existing data, what could I make of it. Then I created endpoints from that. I also used the 'express list endpoints'-package for the user to be able to have an overview of existing endpoints. I used filter, find and slice-methods to get the desired data. I also created error-messages to show to the user when no data was found. It wasn't always so easy to decide if the endpoint should be a query param or a path param.

What I learned

• How to deploy to Heroku
• Understanding of what node-js and express is and how to work with them.
• Knowledge on how to create routes using Express.
• Better understanding of what a RESTful-API is.
• Understanding of the process of deciding how to structure an API and deciding which endpoints it should include, based on existing data and desired usage on the front-end.
• Understanding of the difference between a path-param and a query-param.
• A better overall understanding of how front-end and back-end depend on each other and what can/should best be done on each end.
• A better understanding of the backend-capabilities of Javascript.

If I had more time I would like to also build a front-end for this API which uses the data and shows it in a nice way to the user.

View it live

https://hanna-books-api.herokuapp.com/