Introduction

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) have become more important than ever. The use of an API allows for a single server-side program to be used by multiple scripts and applications. Due to its usefulness, API management has become one of the most common tasks for backend developers using Node.js.

Let's take the example of a company with both a website and a mobile app. Both of these front-facing interfaces require essentially the same functionality from the server. By wrapping this functionality in an API, we allow for clean separation and reuse of the server-side code. Gone are the days of clunky PHP applications that embed backend functionality directly into the interface code of a website.

We'll use Node.js to set up a Representational State Transfer (REST) API. Our API will run on Express.js, a popular web application framework with routing functionality. With these tools, we can quickly have an endpoint running on our localhost. We'll look at...