Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js 10 - Third Edition

By : Valentin Bojinov
Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js 10 - Third Edition

By: Valentin Bojinov

Overview of this book

When building RESTful services, it is really important to choose the right framework. Node.js, with its asynchronous, event-driven architecture, is exactly the right choice for building RESTful APIs. This third edition of RESTful Web API Design with Node.js 10 will teach you to create scalable and rich RESTful applications based on the Node.js platform. You will be introduced to the latest NPM package handler and understand how to use it to customize your RESTful development process. You will begin by understanding the key principle that makes an HTTP application a RESTful-enabled application. After writing a simple HTTP request handler, you will create and test Node.js modules using automated tests and mock objects; explore using the NoSQL database, MongoDB, to store data; and get to grips with using self-descriptive URLs. You’ll learn to set accurate HTTP status codes along with understanding how to keep your applications backward-compatible. Also, while implementing a full-fledged RESTful service, you will use Swagger to document the API and implement automation tests for a REST-enabled endpoint with Mocha. Lastly, you will explore some authentication techniques to secure your application.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Setting up a development environment


JavaScript developers are rarely used to developing their projects in an IDE; most of them use text editors and tend to be prejudiced against anything that contradicts their views. GitHub has finally managed to calm most of them down by releasing the Atom IDE for the desktop environment. This may not solve all of the arguments about which is the best environment, but will at least bring some peace, and let people concentrate on their code, not on the tooling, which in the end is a matter of personal preference. The samples in this book are developed in the Atom IDE, but feel free to use any piece of software that can create files, including command-line editors such as vi or vim, if that would make you feel like a JS superhero, though bear in mind that superheroes are so 20th century!

You can download the Atom IDE from https://ide.atom.io/.

It is time to start our first Node.js application, a simple web server responding with Hello from Node.js. Select...