Get a full fake REST API with zero coding in less than 30 seconds (seriously)

Created with <3 for front-end developers who need a quick back-end for prototyping and mocking.

Powers JSONPlaceholder

Create a db.json file

{
  "posts": [
    { "id": 1, "title": "json-server", "author": "typicode" }
  ],
  "comments": [
    { "id": 1, "body": "some comment", "postId": 1 }
  ]
}

Start JSON Server

$ json-server db.json

Now if you go to http://localhost:3000/posts/1, you will get:

{ 
  "id": 1,
  "body": "foo"
}

Also, data is persisted to db.json when you make POST, PUT, PATCH and DELETE requests. So it's a fully functional fake REST server.

In fact, you instantly get all these routes:

GET   /posts
GET   /posts?title=json-server&author=typicode
GET   /posts/1/comments
GET   /posts/1
POST  /posts
PUT   /posts/1
PATCH /posts/1
DEL   /posts/1

To slice resources, add _start and _end.

GET /posts?_start=0&_end=10
GET /posts/1/comments?_start=0&_end=10

To sort resources, add _sort and _order (ascending order by default).

GET /posts?_sort=views&_order=DESC
GET /posts/1/comments?_sort=votes&_order=ASC

To make a full-text search on resources, add q.

GET /posts?q=internet

Returns database.

GET /db

Returns default index file or serves ./public directory.

GET /

$ npm install -g json-server

You can use JSON Server to serve your HTML, JS and CSS, simply create a ./public directory.

You can access your fake API from anywhere using CORS and JSONP.

You can load remote schemas:

$ json-server http://example.com/file.json
$ json-server http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/db

You can use JS to programmatically create data:

module.exports = function() {
  data = { users: [] }
  // Create 1000 users
  for (var i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
    data.users.push({ name: 'user' + i })
  }
  return data
}

$ json-server index.js

You can use JSON Server as a module:

var server = require('json-server')

server({
  posts: [
    { id: 1, body: 'foo' }
  ]
}).listen(3000)

You can deploy JSON Server. For example, JSONPlaceholder is an online fake API powered by JSON Server and running on Heroku.

• Fast prototyping using Restangular and Json-server
• ng-admin: Add an AngularJS admin GUI to any RESTful API

• Grunt JSON Server
• docker-json-server
• JSON Server GUI

MIT - Typicode