Building REST APIs
📌 Covered in this chapter:
REST Principles · Resource Naming · CRUD Endpoints · Pagination · Filtering & Sorting
Apply REST principles to design clean, predictable Express APIs — resource naming, status codes, pagination, filtering and sorting.
1Building REST APIs — What You'll Learn
Apply REST principles to design clean, predictable Express APIs — resource naming, status codes, pagination, filtering and sorting.
Here's everything this chapter covers, in the order you'll learn it:
- REST principles
- Resource naming conventions
- CRUD APIs (Create, Read, Update, Delete)
- Correct status codes for each operation
- DTOs (Data Transfer Objects)
- Request validation
- Consistent response format
- Pagination
- Filtering
- Sorting
- Searching
- API versioning
- Error response structure
- API documentation basics
2Working Example
💻 Example: Building REST APIs
JavaScript
▶ Run in Compiler
app.get("/api/courses", (request, response) => {
const { page = 1, limit = 10 } = request.query;
response.json({
page: Number(page),
limit: Number(limit),
data: [{ id: 1, title: "Node.js Master Course" }],
});
});3Best Practices & Common Pitfalls
💡 Key things to remember:
- Resource names in REST URLs should be plural nouns (/courses, not /getCourse) — the HTTP method already expresses the action.
- A consistent JSON response shape (e.g. always { data, meta } or { data, error }) makes your API far easier for frontend developers to consume.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q What's the most important thing to understand about building rest apis?
Focus on: REST Principles · Resource Naming · CRUD Endpoints · Pagination · Filtering & Sorting. These are the core building blocks this chapter's examples are built around, and they show up repeatedly in later chapters of this course.
Q Do I need external npm packages for building rest apis?
Only where explicitly shown in the code examples above (like Express, Zod, or Socket.IO) — otherwise, this chapter relies entirely on Node.js's own built-in capabilities.