I like to create software following a simple approach where I first define how clients will interact with it, should it be humans interacting with UIs or other apps interacting with APIs.
Say I want to create an SDK in Go that interacts with a internal service. First, I determine how other apps will interact with that. For example, before starting creating the logic behind the function, I know my function will look like this:
func main() {
items, err := customSDK.GetItem(id)
// ...
}
Usually, that also makes my life easier to work with automated tests. During the actual development, I'll probably add a new extra parameter or even make a brutal change to the API, but that's how I like to start.
That's not different for user interfaces, I like to see real information when coding front-end stuff as well. In most cases, the front-end will start after the API is already finished, especially when it comes to rebranding the entire UI and starting a fresh version.
Though, sometimes we need to see the front-end in action even when the back-end is planned to be executed after. Also, there are some cases we want to implement a feature as a test or playground to learn something new, but don't want to implement an entire back-end API.
Serving Mock data
Instead of creating mock objects directly on your front-end, and adding timeouts to ‘fake’ a loading layer that a network request would add, you can simply create a mock server using json-server.
Create a db.json file and add in some resources:
{
"posts": [
{
"id": 1,
"title": "My post title",
"views": 100
}
],
"profile": {
"name": "My Profile"
}
}
Simply run:
npx json-server db.json
Once you start your local server, you can run the following command to get a post with ID = 1:
curl -X 'GET' 'http://localhost:3000/posts/1' \
-H 'Accept: application/json'
That's it! You now have a REST API up and running. Run npx json-server --help for a full list of option or check the documentation.
