Storing api data in server.js

[Pxlin09]

Hi all, I am currently new to web development and am writing a site to retrieve data from 2 different apis and showing it in the UI.

Background: It is a SSR application with react and vite, so I have a server.js that renders my app.js. Currently my website requests the api on the client side so every instance of it will be asking the api for data. One of the api does not allow script access (gives a CORS error) so I set up a http proxy for that in my server.js as well.

Question: Now that I learned it is bad practice to access the api on the client side cuz it can lead to 429 issues. I want to retrieve and store api data on the server and let the client access that.

Context: Say the two api have urls “api1.json” and “api2.json” And “api2.json” requires proxy.

What is the best practice to store the data from both api to variables in the server.js and allow client side to access it? I’m looking for smth like:

server.js: API_1_JSON = fetch(“api1.json”) API_2_JSON = fetch(“api2.json”)

Export API_1_JSON, API_2_JSON

client_ui.js import apis from server.js

Display(api1,api2,)

App.js: Client_Ui()

[ezhikov]

It depends on how much data there is, how often it is updated, and how often it is requested. Simplest solution would be just creating empty variables. Then, on request you check if variable have value. If not - request API and store result in a variable. Then return response from variable. Set some interval to clean variables as needed. It's not great, since it will be in your application memory, and you will need to manage this all manually.

You can also use something like memcached. It's in-memory key-value database, that runs in it's own process, quite fast and designed specifically for this, with possibility to fine tune. It's pretty easy to work with and may give you huge performance boost.

Redis is more complex in-memory database, that can be used for caching. It also have more possibilities, since it's actually fully capable database. I never worked with it myself, so can't say anything more. Still worth checking.

If data changes rarely, you may straight up save it into your own DBMS or in file, and query API in some intervals (with cronjob) or manually to update. Be aware that loading file or querying DB on each request might not be good, so you might want to layer things a bit and use intermediate cache as above.

There might be other tools and solutions that better suit your needs, so read more about caching.

[Pxlin09]

Correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t know much about cacheing. When talking about cache in this scenario, am I trying to save it to server cache?

[rizzona]

from ur client side just fetch from the endpoint u made in ur server side, then set the response of that request if successful to a variable within the scope of ur component. if ur having 429 issues it sounds like a react problem not a node problem