How to make API requests in Express

In this tutorial, you'll learn how you can make API requests to external REST APIs in Express

To make API requests in the backend we will use the node-fetch npm module that works similar to window.fetch() function.

To get started, let's install the npm module

npm install --save node-fetch@2

Once the installation is complete. Import the node-fetch module in your existing Express project.

const fetch = require('node-fetch')

Make Get requests using node-fetch in Express

We will make a GET request to a REST API to test how we can fetch data from the API in Express

  const express = require('express');
  const cors = require('cors');
  const fetch = require('node-fetch');
  const app = express();

  const port = 3000;

  app.use(cors());

  app.get('/', async (req, res) => {
    try {
      response = await fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users')
      const data = await response.json();
      res.send(data);
    } catch (error) {
      console.log(error);
      res.send({error: 'an error occurred'});
    }
  })

  app.listen(port, () => {
    console.log(`Example app listening at http://localhost:${port}`)
  });

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