Building a Full-Stack Application: Express Backend and Frontend Integration

Hello, everyone! Ian here again. Today, I want to dive into one of my favorite aspects of web development: creating a full-stack application. We'll explore how to set up an Express backend server for the RI-API, which provides picture URLs and fun facts in JSON format, and connect it to a frontend application. This approach allows seamless interaction between different components, even if they run on separate machines or ports.

Setting Up the RI-API Backend with Express

Let's start with the backend. Express.js is a powerful framework for building web servers in Node.js. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting your RI-API backend server up and running:

Step 1: Initialize Your Project

First, create a new directory for your project and navigate into it. Then, initialize a new Node.js project:

mkdir ri-api
cd ri-api
npm init -y

##Then install Express and any other necessary packages

npm install express