Building a REST API with Deno.js and Oak 🦕

In this tutorial, we will build a simple REST API using Deno.js and Oak. Deno is a secure runtime environment for JavaScript and TypeScript that aims to solve a number of problems found in Node.js.

Preparing the Environment

Before you begin, make sure Deno is installed on your system. If not, you can install it using the following command:

curl -fsSL https://deno.land/x/install/install.sh | sh

Creating the API

Let's start by creating a new file called server.ts and importing the necessary modules:

import { Application, Router } from 'https://deno.land/x/oak/mod.ts';

Now let's create the application and the router:

const app = new Application();
const router = new Router();

Now we can define a route for our API:

router.get('/api', ({ response }) => {
  response.body = 'Hello, Deno!';
});

For our application to use the router, we add the following code:

app.use(router.routes());
app.use(router.allowedMethods());

Finally, we can make our application listen on port 8000:

console.log('Server running on port 8000');
await app.listen({ port: 8000 });

Now, if you run deno run --allow-net server.ts, you will see that the server is running on port 8000. If you go to http://localhost:8000/api in your browser, you will see the message "Hello, Deno!".

Conclusion

Ready! You've created a simple REST API with Deno.js and Oak. Deno is still a relatively new technology, but it is already receiving a lot of support and has great potential to become a viable alternative to Node.js in certain scenarios.

To continue learning and improving your skills, check out the article on Creating a Simple Chat with Socket.IO and Node.js.

Let's go up 🦅