Back-end Data and API Prototyping with Faker.js and JSON-Server

Introduction

• User Interfaces can be integrated with REST APIs at Day one?
• These APIs provide interaction points almost similar to what it would be with actual data?
• The calls can have over the wire such that, we get a feeling of retrieving data from a remote server(that mimics the real-life use-case)
• Can it be done in few minutes?

Faker.js

JSON Server

Showcase: Quick Steps

• Create a directory with a name of your choice. say, json-faker-server.
• Change to the directory json-faker-server.
• Do 

  npm init

• Answer the questions to create a node project. Now, you must have a file called 

  package.json

   created.

• Install Faker.js

 npm install faker --save

• Install JSON Server

 npm install json-server --save

• Create a file called 

  index.js

   at the root of the folder.
• Create Fake data of your need. In the following example, I have showed how to create user data with the properties make sense to me.

const faker = require('faker');
  let database = { users: []};
  const threshold = 1000;

  for (let i = 1; i<= threshold; i++) {
  database.users.push({
    id: i,
    name: faker.name.firstName() + " " + faker.name.lastName(),
    job: faker.name.jobTitle(),
    about: faker.lorem.paragraph(),
    phone: faker.phone.phoneNumber(),
    userName: faker.internet.userName(),
    email: faker.internet.email(),
    salary: "$" + faker.finance.amount() + "M",
    // You can also use faker.image.people() for image
    image: "https://source.unsplash.com/1600x900/?user", 
    country: faker.address.country()
  });
 }

  console.log(JSON.stringify(database));

• In the scripts of package.json add this,

 "generate": "node ./index.js > ./db.json",

• Now, you can generate 1000 user records(in db.json) just by running this:

 npm run generate

• This step is way more simpler. In the scripts of 

  package.json

   add this,

 "server": "json-server --watch ./db.json"

• Now, you can start the server using,

npm run server

You will see the server running on the default port(3000). The API will be available @ localhost:3000/users

API Functions

These are the API endpoints we'll be able to use via JSON REST API server:
• GET /users for getting the users
• GET /users/<id> for getting a single user by id
• POST /users for creating a new user
• PUT /users/<id> for updating a user by id
• PATCH /users/<id> for partially updating a user by id
• DELETE /users/<id> for deleting a user by id
We can use _page and _limit parameters to get paginated data as well. That is not all, there are options to search, sort, slice etc, without writing a single line of code. See here for more details.

Links and Resources

• There are ways to deploy and host the JSON Server on Heroku, Now, Azure etc. Here is a great read on how to do it. I have deployed the users API on Heroku. Here it is: json-faker-server.herokuapp.com/users
• All about Faker.js can be found here.
• Read about JSON Server from here.
• All the code examples in this blog post can be found at my GITHub Project.