JSON REST API

A powerful REST API plugin for hooked-api that provides JSON:API-compliant endpoints with minimal configuration. This library makes it easy to create fully-featured REST APIs with support for relationships, filtering, sorting, pagination, and file uploads.

Official Website

Features

• JSON:API Compliant - Full support for the JSON:API specification
• Relationship Support - belongsTo, hasMany, and many-to-many relationships, including polymorphic
• Advanced Querying - Filtering, sorting, pagination, and field selection (sparse fieldsets)
• File Uploads - Built-in support for file handling with multiple storage adapters (local, S3)
• Framework Agnostic - Works with raw Node.js HTTP, Express, and other Node.js frameworks via flexible connectors
• Validation - Schema-based validation with detailed error messages and custom rules
• Simplified Mode - A developer-friendly option to work with plain JavaScript objects instead of verbose JSON:API structure
• Extensible - Built on hooked-api's powerful plugin and hook system for deep customization

Installation

npm install json-rest-api knex better-sqlite3 express

Quick Start

import { RestApiPlugin, RestApiKnexPlugin, ExpressPlugin } from './index.js'; // Added: ExpressPlugin
import { Api } from 'hooked-api';
import knexLib from 'knex';
import util from 'util';
import express from 'express'; // Added: Express

// Create a Knex instance connected to SQLite in-memory database
const knex = knexLib({
  client: 'better-sqlite3',
  connection: {filename: ':memory:' }
});

// Create API instance
const api = new Api({ name: 'book-catalog-api', logLevel: 'trace' });

// Install plugins
await api.use(RestApiPlugin);
await api.use(RestApiKnexPlugin, { knex });
await api.use(ExpressPlugin, { mountPath: '/api' }); // Express connector


// Define authors resource, which belongs to a publisher
await api.addResource('authors', {
  schema: {
    name: { type: 'string', required: true, max: 100, search: true },
    surname: { type: 'string', required: true, max: 100, search: true },
  },
});
await api.resources.authors.createKnexTable();

// Run the server
app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Express server started on port 3000. API available at http://localhost:3000/api');
}).on('error', (err) => {
  console.error('Failed to start server:', err);
  process.exit(1)
});

// Your API is ready! Try:
// GET http://localhost:3000/api/authors
// POST http://localhost:3000/api/authors

Documentation

• Quick Start - Quick start
• Complete guide - Comprehensive guide
• API Reference - API reference
• Why json-rest-api? - Step-by-step tutorial