Building a Simple REST API with Express.js

Once I was comfortable with frontend JavaScript, I wanted to build my own backend. Express.js is the most popular framework for Node.js. It's minimalist and unopinionated. You set up a server by requiring express, initializing the app, and defining routes. app.get('/api/users', (req, res) => { res.json([{ name: 'John' }]); }); This listens for GET requests to that URL and sends back JSON. Middleware is a core concept; it's functions that execute during the request-response cycle. app.use(express.json()) is a middleware that parses incoming JSON bodies, allowing you to access req.body. Starting with Express demystified how APIs work. Instead of magic, I saw that my frontend fetch calls were just hitting specific routes that I had defined with logic to read from a database. I built a simple to-do list API with just a few routes, and it felt like unlocking the full stack.