How to Setup a JSON Server?

This is the pattern I’m using when working with the json-server. Of course, you will first need to install it. You’d probably want to install it globally with using this piece of code:

npm i -g json-server

Then I find that the best way to set up my Db is to separate it into two files.

First I create a ‘data.js’ file to contain all of my data. For example, say that our data is products. The data.js file needs to look like:

let db = { 
	"products" :[
		{ title: "Product 1",},
		{ title: "Product 2",},
		{ title: "Product 3",},
		{ title: "Product 4",},
		{ title: "Product 5",},
		{ title: "Product 6",},
		{ title: "Product 7",},
		{ title: "Product 8",},
		{ title: "Product 9",}
	]
}
id = 1;
db.products.forEach(
	(product) => {
		product['id'] = id; id++; 
	}
);
module.exports = db;

Notice the module.export statement at the end. Additionally, I am adding Id’s to all of the products in a For loop (rather than setting it one-by-one), because json-server supports this field by default.

Then I require this module in db.js:

data = module.require("./data.js");
module.exports = () => data;

It’s more convenient for me to use two files, but we can probably store everything in db.js.

Finally, I will execute the json-server using the following piece of code:

json-server db/db.js --delay 2000

I’m also adding some delay to simulate actual server communication.

Json-server is a very cool tool that you can do a lot of stuff with. Comment below if you’ll have any issues or suggestions.