REST & Express lesson notes

rest-express.md

REST & Express

Objectives

• Describe the concept of resources in relation to REST and APIs
• Identify RESTful conventions for API routes
• Explain what express is and why it's useful
• Build RESTful routes using express

REST

• What is a resource?

  Your answer...

• What are the five common actions of an API? What methods and status codes are typically used for the five common actions?

  Your answer...

• Build RESTful routes for one of the following resources: cards, dogs, engineers

  Action	Method	Path	Body
  _
  _
  _
  _
  _

  Your answer...

• Attept this REST Quiz!

  https://learn.co/lessons/rest-quiz

• How would you build RESTful routes for the following data?

  const authors = [
    {
      name: 'Haruki Murakami',
      books: [
        { title: 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World' },
        { title: 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' }
      ]
    },
    {
      name: 'Kurt Vonnegut'
      books: [
        { title: 'Slaughterhouse-Five' }
      ]
    }
  ]

  • Get all authors
  • Get one author
  • Add new author
  • Get all books by author
  • Get one book by author
  • Add new book by author
  • Edit one book by author
  • Delete one book by author
  • Challenge: Get a specific number of authors?

  Your answer...

Express

• Compare the two example HTTP web servers bellow:

const fs = require('fs')
const http = require('http')

const server = http.createServer(function(request, response) {
  if(request.url === '/logo.png') {
    response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'image/gif'})

    fs.readFile(__dirname + '/public/logo.png', function(err, data) {
      if(err) console.log(err)

      response.end(data)
    })
  }
  else if (request.url === '/'){
    response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html' })

    fs.readFile(__dirname + '/public/index.html', function(err, data) {
      if(err) console.log(err)

      response.end(data)
    })
  }
})

const express = require('express')
const app = express()

app.use(express.static('./public'))

app.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
  res.sendFile('./public/index.html')
})

app.listen(3000)
console.log('Express server is listening on port 3000')

• What tasks does this server perform?
• What parts of the process does Express help you with?

Practice

Lets practice building a simple server with express.

• Create a new folder called express-lesson
• Run npm init -y
• Install express dependencies: npm i express body-parser nodemon morgan
• Create a file called app.js
• Add the following script to package.json: "start": "nodemon app.js"
• Build the basic express server and open connections on port 3000.
• Copy the author data from above into app.js
• Implement the following author routes in express:
  • Get All
  • Post
  • Get One