Json-dummy-api NPM

JSON Dummy API

Introduction

This is simple express backed REST api server which send dummy data as respose as per set by the user. You use this in your front-end project as testing api server.

As this JSON-Dummy-API uses express app at backend you need to constantly detect changes and restart the server that's the where dev. dependancy called nodemon come handy

You can directly use node to start the server but each time you make changes in server configurations or any server related file you have to terminate the server and run node command again and again thats why we are using nodemon for constant change detection and updation

To use nodemon in your project, lets first install it

npm i nodemon --save-dev

you can install globally if you want you just need to add -g flag to the command after you install nodemon next step is to create server.js file

Create the Server config file

Below given is the very basic syntax of the configuration and server starter file you need

const { app , PARAGRAPH } = require("json-dummy-api");

const routes = [
  {
    routeName: "/simpleParagraph",
    response: {
      para: PARAGRAPH,
    },
  },
];

app.startDummyServer(routes);

startDummyServer is the must have function to start the server.
routes is the configuration array which is optional

After you create server.js file to start this dummy server on localhost you have to use nodemon (or maybe node in your case). To start the server simply run below command in the same file directory

nodemon server.js

For constant change tracking and automatic restart

OR

node server.js

For single time start

Points to Note here

app : Return the express app instance on which you can directly start express backend coding if you want
you must call/import json-dummy-api using require("json-dummy-api") as it uses Node at it Core
startDummyServer Function : It is a function which actually starts listening the server. You can pass config routes as parameter if you want.
Configroutes : its is an array of objects passed to startDummyServer() which is basically configuration for on which route which object to be sent

Random Data Types Config

Data Import	Return values of
PARAGRAPH	Returns the small parapgraph with avg 5 sentenses
NAME	returns first name and last name combined
SENTENSE	returns the sentense of avg 7 words
ADDRESS	smallest possible address generator
COUNTRY	Two Digit Short Country Code
EMAIL	Generated random fake email with @
USERNAME	Generate Twitter username (random + fake) "@" included
COMPANY	Generate fake company name to user
DOMAIN	generate fake domain name for the comapany or the user
PHONE	generates phone no
DATE	generates date as a string (Long format)
TIMESTAMP	Timestamp is 8 digit long number in ms
NUMBER	generate random integer
FLOAT	Random Float value between 0 to 1
BOOL	Returns either `true` or `false`
NULL	returns `null`
IMGURL	can pass single (as a side of sqaure) or two-arguments (width and hieght of the image) and it returns the image url

All the above datatypes are exported from the module. you can simply import them via using Object Destructuring syntax. It regenrated random data for Mocking/Prototyping

Whats New in V2

V1 does not support Array and Object integration but the truth is JSON is incomplete without closely integrated Arrays and Objects in each others.For this problem set 2 new data config are added

Data Import	Return values of
OBJECT	Returns the Empty Object by Default, can pass object key-value pairs as a Parameters
ARRAY	returns the Array of `type` Specified of `limit` as length

Use Cases

OBJECT

const { DATE, BOOL, OBJECT } = require("dummy-json-api");
const routes = [
  {
    routeName: "/object",
    response: {
      birthDay: OBJECT({
        date: DATE,
        adult: BOOL,
      }),
    },
  },
];
app.startDummyServer(routes);

in OBJECT function you can directly pass the childrens and its types as per above example

ARRAY

const {
  app,
  BOOL,
  ARRAY,
} = require("json-dummy-api");
const routes = [
  {
    routeName: "/array",
    response: {
      arr: ARRAY({
        type: BOOL,
        limit: 30,
      }),
    },
  },
];
app.startDummyServer(routes);

in ARRAY function you can directly pass object where you can specify type of the array elements in type and length of the array in limit args. Both args are compulsory

Default Routes

while developing version 1 I just wanted to add some default routes just like json-typicode api hence three default routes were added in V2

Route	Value it returns
`/qanda`	returns the array of the QandA with Question, Answer , Upvotes , Downvotes
`/users`	return the array of user objects with Name,username,Bio,Age
`/products`	returns the array of products with title, description,price,starrating,instock

Above are all the parent routes like this routes usually returns all the data. To get one perticular object you have to pass the id in request as /users/25 above request will send only the data of user with userID 25

examples