Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js - Second Edition

By : Valentin Bojinov
Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js - Second Edition

By: Valentin Bojinov

Overview of this book

In this era of cloud computing, every data provisioning solution is built in a scalable and fail-safe way. Thus, when building RESTful services, the right choice for the underlying platform is vital. Node.js, with its asynchronous, event-driven architecture, is exactly the right choice to build RESTful APIs. This book will help you enrich your development skills to create scalable, server-side, RESTful applications based on the Node.js platform. Starting with the fundamentals of REST, you will understand why RESTful web services are better data provisioning solution than other technologies. You will start setting up a development environment by installing Node.js, Express.js, and other modules. Next, you will write a simple HTTP request handler and create and test Node.js modules using automated tests and mock objects. You will then have to choose the most appropriate data storage type, having options between a key/value or document data store, and also you will implement automated tests for it. This module will evolve chapter by chapter until it turns into a full-fledged and secure Restful service.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
RESTful Web API Design with Node.js - Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Specifying the API


The very first thing that has to be defined for any web API is the operations it will expose. According to the REST principles, an operation is exposed by an HTTP method and a URI. The action performed by each operation should not contradict the natural meaning of its HTTP method. The following table specifies the operations of our API in detail:

Method

URI

Description

GET

/contacts

Retrieves all available contacts.

GET

/contacts/:primary-phone-number

Retrieves a single contact by its primary phone number.

POST

/contacts/

Updates a contact, if it exists. Otherwise, it creates a new contact.

PUT

/contacts/

Creates a new contact.

DELETE

/contacts/:primary-phone-number

Deletes an existing contact.

GET

/groups

Retrieves all available groups that have contacts assigned.

GET

/groups:group-name

Retrieves a unique list of all the groups assigned to contacts.

DELETE

/groups/:name

Deletes a group from all the contacts...