Creating a Mock REST Server with only one command

This tip is intended for frontend developers who need to quickly create a REST Backend server.

It is necessary to have Node installed, version 8 or higher. First, create a file with the .json extension containing the content you want to provide on the server.

The file has a structure similar to this one:

{
   "users":[
      {
         "id":1,
         "name":"daniel"
      }
   ]
}

You can create any kind of structure, for example:

{
  "posts": [
    { "id": 1, "title": "json-server", "author": "typicode" }
  ],
  "comments": [
    { "id": 1, "body": "some comment", "postId": 1 }
  ],
  "profile": { "name": "typicode" }
}

Now that we have this structure, we will use a single command to provide a REST server:

$ npx json-server data.json

As a result, we have the server running on port 3000. In the browser, we have:

All HTTP methods of the REST service are available, such as Get, Post, Delete, etc. For example, to create a new row you can use the HTTP POST method:

Enjoy!