Create REST Service Using Node.JS and Express

                             In this article, we will see how to expose REST services using Node.JS and Express.JS. Express is a lightweight web framework built for Node.JS.

Now we will see how to build REST services using Express.JS. Follow the steps to set up the Express and to expose the REST APIs.

Step 1: Open the command prompt and create a folder. In this example, I have created a folder called “express_example”.

Step 2: Move to “express_example” folder and run the below command. During this command execution user need to provide some inputs. After the execution, you will see “pacakge.json” file under “express_example” folder.

npm init 

Step 3:  Now, install node “express” module by running the below command.

npm install express --save

Step 4: Now, create a JS file to expose the REST services. In this example, I have created “express_exmaple.js” file. As a first step, we need to import the “express” node module by keeping the below code.

var express = require('express');

The below code will create an HTTP server behind the scenes.

var app = express();

If we are not setting the port to listen, by default express will bind the HTTP server to run on 3000 port. In this example, I want to listen to the requests on port 8080. The listen function call will take the port to listen.

app.listen(8080, function() {
       console.log("The Node Server is running on port 8080");
});

Now we will expose simple REST service. This service will get the product details for the product id passing as part of the query string. The example request URL is “http:// localhost:8080/getProduct?id=92879809”

app.get('/getProduct', function(req, res) {
   var product_id = req.query.id;
   console.log("The product id [" + product_id + "]");
   var product = new Object();
   product.name = "Samsung Galaxy J5";
   product.price = 178;
   res.send(product);
});

If you want to pass the id as part of request URI, let say “http:// localhost:8080/getProduct/92879809”, then we need to access id as request param. The below example uses the same.

app.get('/getProduct/:id', function(req, res) {
   var product_id = req.param.id;
   console.log("The product id [" + product_id + "]");
   var product = new Object();
   product.name = "Samsung Galaxy J5";
   product.price = 178;
   res.send(product);
});

In the next article, we will see how to create Node Express Application using “express-generator".

About Siva Prasad Rao Janapati

Siva Janapati is an Architect with experience in building Cloud Native Microservices architectures, Reactive Systems, Large scale distributed systems, and Serverless Systems. Siva has hands-on in architecture, design, and implementation of scalable systems using Cloud, Java, Go lang, Apache Kafka, Apache Solr, Spring, Spring Boot, Lightbend reactive tech stack, APIGEE edge & on-premise and other open-source, proprietary technologies. Expertise working with and building RESTful, GraphQL APIs. He has successfully delivered multiple applications in retail, telco, and financial services domains. He manages the GitHub(https://github.com/2013techsmarts) where he put the source code of his work related to his blog posts.