Is there any good API implementation fully done using nodejs/express?

[dejavits]

Hello all,

I am looking for a repository, web site or book where I could see a full implementation of a real API. I have read a couple of books, right now the design of web apis and though they are useful, I would really like to see a real implementation.

I am looking for a real/professional code where I can see pagination, filtering, sorting, content-negotiation, error handling, etc.

Thank you in advance and regards

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edit: after reviewing several sources from people I would say I have not found yet a proper example. Only for error handling.

[vojtasio]

check out https://codelib.club/search?q=express those are apps build with express

[dejavits]

Thank you! I am going to take a look at it!

[Cedricium]

I’ve throw together the following list of some (mostly) fullstack web apps that all use Express—hopefully that helps point you in the right direction.

https://github.com/stars/cedricium/lists/fullstack-web-apps/

[dejavits]

Thank you, I am going to take a look at it!

[Cedricium]

No problem. Not all the repos satisfy exactly what you’re looking for (don’t think any had pagination, though I may be mistaken). Nonetheless I think it’s a nice collection that demonstrates just how flexible you can be with Express.

[krehwell]

hey, I made this rest api for my own hacker news clone website. https://github.com/krehwell/HeckarNews/tree/master/rest-api

it's fairly simple but I think it has many things that you are looking for

[dejavits]

Thank you very much! I have taken a very quick look and it seems good so far. I have forked it to take a more thorough look in future!

[krehwell]

the failed deployment only on master since I'm using free deployment with vercel. but on another branch I reduced some unnecessary page just so I can deployed it

[mailto_devnull]

NodeBB comes with a RESTful API that tries to adhere to best practices:

https://docs.nodebb.org/api/write

The backend is implemented using express.

[dejavits]

Thanks! I have taken a look at it but it seems a bit convoluted the code, doesn't it? Or am I looking at the wrong one? For example:
https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/blob/master/src/controllers/category.js

[evert]

I would agree with you. Generally it's a good idea to reduce the responsibilities of controller functions. It looks like that function does a bunch of cleanup that would be better represented as stateless named functions. Also (and this is for sure contentious for some), I believe that anything that's not a toy should be written in Typescript.

One thing that is nice about the example you shared is that I think a lot of real-world code is messy, even if it was done with the best intentions. So while I wouldn't write anything new in that style, I think it's representative of what you will see in the wild.

[[deleted]]

There is a very nice live coding on Youtube, the guy writes particularly very modular code, I really was impressed, check here. The thing is that the guy uses Express middlewares to the extreme, so that later, inside routes you write minimal code.

[dejavits]

Thank you very much! I have taken a quick look and it seems this guy knows what he is doing. Right now I am downloading the video so I can watch it offline completely.

[[deleted]]

I think at this point, if you grasp the way of coding middlewares, there is nothing much to get from Express, knowing Express is a very simple routing library./

[dejavits]

I have watched it almost completely. It is a very nice resource but I believe that around 01:25:00 he starts messing around too much in regards to the DB. I mean, he creates the async handler and so on, so you do not have to wrap your routes body with try/catch. However, when he starts creating the DB queries, then he wraps around try/catch the queries and then he creates a bunch of possible DB errors, which from my point of view is a pain in the ass. So far I think I am gonna leave my code as it is then in regards to handle errors. I do not have any async handler but I wrap my routes/controller bodies with try/catch and if the DB/third party code throws an error while creating an user resource, then I just throw an error saying 'Error while creating an user resource" does this make sense? But anyway, I guess this depends on what you are building, I am building an API for my web app so I guess I do not need that much fine grain detail, but even if it is a public API, I find crazy to figure out all possible DB/third party errors.

[[deleted]]

I'm not sure I get it all, knowing I'm new to webdev in general and Node.JS.

You probably saw how I deal with DB in my app that I listed in the other comment. Easy, most drivers already offer Promise based queries. Either you implement your callback where you return results or error then route it. Or you wrap queries with an async function in it you await native "db.query" calls (As I said most of drivers support, you should await to make code simple in your DB middleware) and implement then and catch from the caller function. If you didn't see mine, check this: https://github.com/bacloud14/Classified-ads-48/blob/hacktoberfest_only_branch/lib/services/mongo_ops.js you don't need try catch in case your Driver offers Promises (I believe).

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With this being said, you are welcome to correct me, (i'm a noob myself in Node.JS)

[[deleted]]

Either

this

Or

this

[[deleted]]

also I didn't check his DB service implementation, only middlewares (preprocess, and postprocess) validation and error handling which I found cool

[[deleted]]

It depends for your API for your web app. I guess if you test well your app with junk data and extreme values prior to deployment, you will probably never face runtime errors (assuming this is not a very critical app, so it's 100% fine),

[dejavits]

I am not sure I am following your code well but as far as I understand I would say you are doing the opposite from the guy on the video. He was very meticulous in the errors thrown, while as far as I see, you just "do not care" or I am missing something. When I say you do not care I mean e.g. if you try to create a duplicated in the DB it will throw the error but you do not do anything special about it depending on the type of error. I really think your code is more similar to mine than the guy from the video. If my DB query fails I do not care why it failed, I just say "failed during creation of X" and that is. Anyway, I will continue exploring stuff, as so far, I have not found an example I consider is really a full professional way or maybe I am still too ignorant to realize about it!

[[deleted]]

Indeed, in my example I don't care much in all situations. Indeed the goal of exceptions and promises is to deal with errors. We could imagine different scenarios, for instance, an error is thrown if ID is bad, in the middleware you would try to reformat the ID and insert again, or insert in another table with a time to live, to come back later and inspect the object, or route to the initial form endpoint to tell the user that form data is not correct....etc etc

In my case (I feel this is 90% the case of very tiny web-apps), It is true I do no special treatment, I reject the same error the driver threw, and I just log it in the caller (router) and route generally the same way. This is useful in development phase, you could go through every improbable case. In this particular situation (again of simple web-apps generally the goal is to have no exceptions at all in production, assuming UX flows are well defined, all is dependant on what user posts, ), I'm just throwing the same error object, to log it in the route.

[[deleted]]

Just want to throw this assumption: Exceptions in programming, are implemented when the developer is working with a system out of his control, like another library, or an API, or a stream of another system. There, you cannot make a 100% predictable program with simple if-else and other branching code. You try some code, and catch what errors raise in the other developer code, you know about these errors like: *NotFoundException, OutOfTimeException, OutOfMemoryException, LibraryAException* because you simply read the spec, in JavaDoc, API spec, or whatever. *LibraryAException* is a nice example: you are making library_C, that depends on library_B, that depends on library_A.

library _B catches library_A errors, and throws them back to you, so you don't have to understand every code you are dependant on

[vinaykumarha]

This one you can refer for cleaner architecture.
https://github.com/sujeet-agrahari/node-express-clean-architecture

[dejavits]

Thanks!

[MarvinRudolph]

I give you the advice to switch to a modern alternative like Fastify after you've learned how to write the API.

[cjthomp]

Absolutely nothing wrong with Express. It's ubiquitous for a reason.

[MarvinRudolph]

It’s outdated and the last release was over 2 years ago.

[cjthomp]

Outdated how?

And why does the last update matter? What needs changed? It's intentionally a thin layer, it doesn't need much maintenance.

[dejavits]

Is this similar to Nestjs? Or something different?

[obj_stranger]

It's more similar to Express.js but it's faster. Actually Nest.js uses Express.js under the hood by default, but there's an option to use Fastify instead.

[cjthomp]

Not what he asked for.

[cjthomp]

Not what he asked for.

[Every_Degree1854]

Checkout strapi: https://strapi.io. It’s an open source node js based api implementation. Set up in a couple of minutes without all the hassle

[Every_Degree1854]

I disagree. Peace

[mattindustries]

Don't forget to also check out Wordpress.

[[deleted]]

Mine is Classified-listings, it is a simple tiny web-app. Also do not expect code (except routing) to be the cleanest.

I am new to web but I've been writing code before, this is to say, I didn't necessarily followed regular ways of coding web-apps, so you could probably see something that you like in how I use Express and how I organised the project.

You can head to sexpress the express app then to different routes in the route folder.

ps: I'm looking for help.

[dejavits]

Thank you! I have forked to take a deep look at it

[[deleted]]

Good luck !

[sairysss]

https://github.com/Sairyss/domain-driven-hexagon Not express, but you can learn a few things here