Node.js API Tutorial for Beginners | Build a Basic Node.js REST API in 10 Minutes - Part 1

In this Node.js API tutorial for beginners, we'll walk through the basics of setting up a Node.js API using the Express library.

In part 1, we get the project set up, and we walk through the basics of how routing works in Express.js.

We also get some queries set up so that we can have a functional "index" page and a "show" page.

In the next episode, we'll integrate Mongo via Mongoose to actually wrap this up and build out the full CRUD API.

What is a REST API?

REST stands for representational state transfer. If that sounds too complicated, you're right 🤣

A very oversimplified explanation is that we need to have everything we need to process an API request included in the request. We see this in action when we use the ID to look up a specific Dog record during the video.