Server-side API Requests + Axios

Axios

A promise-based HTTP Client for Node.js and the browser

• a client-side (frontend) library for making HTTP requests (like fetch).
• simplifies the process of sending asynchronous HTTP requests to a server, and also handles the response
• widely used in web development to fetch data from APIs and interact with servers
• an alternative is using fetch()

• We’re trying to reach out from our server to another resource on the internet → Axios makes responses very simple
• No need to use Json.parse()
• makes error handling easier
• Has an alias for the commonly used HTTP request methods

HTTP method	Axios Alias	Example
GET	axios.get(url, config)	axios.get('/users')
POST	axios.post(url, data, config)	axios.post('/users', { name: 'John' })
PUT	axios.put(url, data, config)	axios.put('/users/123', { name: 'John' })
PATCH	axios.patch(url, data, config)	axios.patch('/users/123', { age: 30 })
DELETE	axios.delete(url, config)	axios.delete('/users/123')

Examples

• useful: Formatting API Requests
• I’m using EJS here (becoz bootcamp) & prop won’t use it again
• Link to the exercise

get

app.get("/", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const response = await axios.get("https://bored-api.appbrewery.com/random");
    const result = response.data;
    res.render("index.ejs", { data: result });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error("Failed to make request:", error.message);
    res.render("index.ejs", {
      error: error.message,
    });
  }
});

• axios.get(url, config)

post/put/patch

• axios.post(url, body, config)
  • body - body of your data send over when sending to the server
  • config - headers (if u want authentication), etc
• axios.put(url, body, config)
• axios.post(url, body, config)

delete

• axios.delete(url, config)