Building an API in Node.js without using any packages

1. dotenv

   1 250 19,860 8.3 JavaScript

   Loads environment variables from .env for nodejs projects.

   

   Looking at the progress Node.js has made in the past few years makes me think that many popular and widely used npm packages might soon be unnecessary or even deprecated. Most Node.js developers are familiar with packages like dotenv for working with .env files, node-fetch for making HTTP requests, and jest for testing.

2. SurveyJS

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3. jest

   2 526 44,882 8.9 TypeScript

   Delightful JavaScript Testing.

   

   Since version 20, the Node test runner is available as a stable module. This means you can safely use it for testing. The syntax that Node provides is pretty similar to Jest. You check your function results with assert, and test suites are organized with describe, test, beforeEach... aliases, just like in Jest. Here’s a sample test for bitcoinService.ts:

4. node-fetch

   3 94 8,842 0.0 JavaScript

   A light-weight module that brings the Fetch API to Node.js

   

   Looking at the progress Node.js has made in the past few years makes me think that many popular and widely used npm packages might soon be unnecessary or even deprecated. Most Node.js developers are familiar with packages like dotenv for working with .env files, node-fetch for making HTTP requests, and jest for testing.

5. Express

   4 782 67,316 8.9 JavaScript

   Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for node.

   

   So that’s the first big downside of building a REST API without using packages like express.js - you have to build all the route handling yourself, plus add some support for middlewares.

6. node-api-without-dependencies

   5 1 0 4.9 TypeScript

   

   To support different REST endpoints, you need to write a custom router that can trigger different route handlers for /v1/bitcoin/rates and /v1/bitcoin/rates/:currency. This takes a bit of playing around with regex:

7. InfluxDB

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   InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

   

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