BEGINNER • API Foundations and HTTP
API Operations Playbook #25
This lesson targets reduce API latency in a realistic e-commerce checkout backend workflow. You will practice commands: npm init -y | npm run dev | node server.js. The code example is specific to backend API engineering tasks for this lesson objective.
Code Example
import express from "express";
const app = express();
app.use(express.json());
app.get("/health", (_req, res) => {
res.status(200).json({
status: "ok",
service: "backend-api-mastery",
objective: "reduce API latency",
});
});
app.post("/orders/preview", (req, res) => {
const { items = [] } = req.body as { items?: Array<{ qty: number; price: number }> };
const total = items.reduce((sum, item) => sum + item.qty * item.price, 0);
return res.status(200).json({ scenario: "e-commerce checkout backend", total });
});
app.listen(3000, () => console.log("Run:", "npm init -y"));Commands & References
- npm init -y
- npm run dev
- node server.js
Lab Steps
- Prepare environment using: npm init -y
- Implement endpoint or middleware for this scenario.
- Test positive/negative cases and inspect response contracts.
- Document one reliability or security improvement.
Exercises
- Add one edge-case validation and return clear error details.
- Improve one endpoint to be idempotent and test retries.
- Write one test case proving the expected API behavior.