Introduction We are agile! In most of our projects we are asked to develop User Interfaces in parallel to the back-end services and APIs. This gives us the challenge of Implement and Test the User Interfaces without the real and real-like data availability. Not only that, how about the APIs? Can it be faked such that, 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? For most of the projects where I less worry about the truthfulness of the data but, rest of it matters, I would like to use the combination of these: Faker.js helps us building massive amount of Fake data in real quick time. Though the data is fake, you can still build the data with the required type, structure with which the User Interfaces can be tested early. Faker.js It has got various methods to provide data related to address, finance, commerce, date etc. JSON Server helps us in getting a full fake REST API with in ! It is insanely true. The beauty of it is, it uses a JSON file as a data store which can be built easily with . JSON Server zero coding less than a minute Faker.js Showcase: Quick Steps As we have got a high level introductions to both and , let us see them coming together to solve the data and API prototype problem, faster. Faker.js JSON Server Create a New Project 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 created. package.json Install Dependencies Install Faker.js npm install faker --save Install JSON Server npm install json-server --save Create a Database We will be creating a database( ) using . db.json Faker.js Create a file called at the root of the folder. index.js Create Fake data of your need. In the following example, I have showed how to create data with the properties make sense to me. user faker = ( ); database = { : []}; threshold = ; ( i = ; i<= threshold; i++) {
  database.users.push({ : i, : faker.name.firstName() + + faker.name.lastName(), : faker.name.jobTitle(), : faker.lorem.paragraph(), : faker.phone.phoneNumber(), : faker.internet.userName(), : faker.internet.email(), : + faker.finance.amount() + , image: , : faker.address.country()
  });
 } .log( .stringify(database)); const require 'faker' let users const 1000 for let 1 id name " " job about phone userName email salary "$" "M" // You can also use faker.image.people() for image "https://source.unsplash.com/1600x900/?user" country console JSON In the of package.json add this, scripts : , "generate" "node ./index.js > ./db.json" Now, you can generate 1000 user records(in ) just by running this: db.json npm run generate Create the Server and API This step is way more simpler. In the of add this, scripts package.json : "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 for more details. here Links and Resources There are ways to deploy and host the JSON Server on Heroku, Now, Azure etc. is a great read on how to do it. I have deployed the users API on . Here it is: Here Heroku json-faker-server.herokuapp.com/users All about can be found . Faker.js here Read about from . JSON Server here All the code examples in this blog post can be found at my . GITHub Project Hope you enjoyed reading it. That's all for now.

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

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