🚀 Building a Dynamic Profile API — My HNG Backend Internship Stage 0 Experience

Hello Dev Community 👋🏽

I recently joined the HNG Internship (Backend Track) — an intensive, hands-on program that challenges developers to solve real-world engineering tasks under tight deadlines and mentorship.

For Stage 0, our first task was to build a simple RESTful API endpoint — but with a fun twist: it had to include a random cat fact fetched dynamically from an external API 🐱

This task seemed simple at first, but it turned out to be a great exercise in API integration, error handling, and clean response formatting — all key skills for backend development.

Task Overview

The goal was to create a GET /me endpoint that returns:
My profile information (name, email, and backend stack)
The current UTC timestamp in ISO 8601 format
A random cat fact from the Cat Facts API
Everything structured neatly as JSON
Each request had to return a new cat fact, meaning no caching was allowed.

⚙️ Tools & Technologies

Node.js
Express.js
Axios (for making HTTP requests)
dotenv (for environment variables)
Railway (for deployment)

What I Learned

This task helped me strengthen my understanding of:
How to consume third-party APIs effectively
Returning clean and predictable JSON responses
Handling timeouts, API failures, and fallback messages
Deploying and testing backend APIs on Railway

It was a small project, but it reinforced the importance of structure and reliability in backend systems.

Conclusion

Stage 0 might be just the beginning, but it reminded me how powerful simple APIs can be when done right.
I’m excited to move on to the next stage of the HNG Internship, learning more about scalable backend design and real-world system building.

💬 Have you ever had to handle API errors or dynamic data fetching in your projects?
Share your experience in the comments — I’d love to connect and learn from others in the community!