Create a Simple News API with Node.js | Programming Tutorials

Introduction

In this project, you will learn how to create a simple news API using Node.js. You will learn how to create a server, handle different routes, and return news data in a specific format.

👀 Preview

curl http://localhost:8080/news
## Output:
## [{"channelId":"5572a108b3cdc86cf39001cd","name":"National Focus"},{"channelId":"5572a108b3cdc86cf39001ce","name":"International Focus"}]

curl http://localhost:8080
## Output:
## 404

🎯 Tasks

In this project, you will learn:

How to create a server using Node.js
How to handle the /news route and return news data
How to handle other routes and return a 404 response

🏆 Achievements

After completing this project, you will be able to:

Understand the basics of creating a server using Node.js
Implement a simple API to return news data
Handle different routes and provide appropriate responses

Create a Server

To get started, open the editor. You should see a file from the editor - "app.js".

In this step, you will learn how to create a server using Node.js. Follow the steps below to complete this step:

Open the app.js file in your coding environment.
Import the http module, which provides the functionality to create a server:
```
const http = require("http");
```
Create a new server using the createServer() method:
```
const serve = http.createServer();
```

Add an event listener to the server to handle incoming requests:

serve.on("request", (req, res) => {
  // TODO: Add code to handle the request
});

Start the server and listen on port 8080:

serve.listen(8080, () => {
  console.log("The service has been started!");
});

Handle the /news Route

In this step, you will learn how to handle the /news route and return news data. Follow the steps below to complete this step:

Inside the request event listener, set the response header to use the utf8 format:
```
res.setHeader("Content-type", "text/html;charset=utf8");
```

Check the requested URL:

if (req.url == "/news") {
  // Handle the /news route
} else {
  // Handle other routes
}

Prepare the news data in the required format:

const data = [
  {
    channelId: "5572a108b3cdc86cf39001cd",
    name: "National Focus"
  },
  {
    channelId: "5572a108b3cdc86cf39001ce",
    name: "International Focus"
  }
];

Send the news data as the response:
```
res.end(JSON.stringify(data));
```

Handle Other Routes

In this step, you will learn how to handle other routes that are not /news.

Inside the request event listener, add an else block to handle other routes:

if (req.url == "/news") {
  // Handle the /news route
  // ...
} else {
  // Handle other routes
  res.end("404");
}

In the else block, send a 404 response to indicate that the requested route was not found.

Now, your app.js file should look like this:

const http = require("http");
const serve = http.createServer();

serve.on("request", (req, res) => {
  // TODO: Add code to handle the request
  res.setHeader("Content-type", "text/html;charset=utf8");
  console.log(req.url);
  if (req.url == "/news") {
    const data = [
      {
        channelId: "5572a108b3cdc86cf39001cd",
        name: "National Focus"
      },
      {
        channelId: "5572a108b3cdc86cf39001ce",
        name: "International Focus"
      }
    ];

    res.end(JSON.stringify(data));
  } else {
    res.end("404");
  }
});

serve.listen(8080, () => {
  console.log("The service has been started!");
});

Test the Server

Run the server using the following command in the terminal:
```
node app.js
```
Open a new terminal again and verify that the terminal is correct with the following command:

curl http://localhost:8080/news
## Output:
## [{"channelId":"5572a108b3cdc86cf39001cd","name":"National Focus"},{"channelId":"5572a108b3cdc86cf39001ce","name":"International Focus"}]

curl http://localhost:8080
## Output:
## 404

Congratulations! You have successfully created a news API using Node.js.

Summary

Congratulations! You have completed this project. You can practice more labs in LabEx to improve your skills.

Building a News API with Node.js