How to consume a Rest API with Axios and Node.js

We have already seen how to create a REST API with Node.js and the express.js library. Now we will learn how to consume a REST API from a Node.js application using the popular library axios.

axios is a promise-based HTTP library that allows us to **make HTTP requests from the client in Node.js and in the browser.

How to use axios

First, make sure to have axios installed in your Node.js project:

npm install axios

Example of Consuming a RESTful API

Suppose we have a RESTful API that manages users and is available at the URL http://localhost:3000/usuarios.

Let’s see an example of how we can consume this API using axios:

const axios = require('axios');

// Make a GET request to get all users
axios.get('http://localhost:3000/usuarios')
  .then((response) => {
    // Handle the successful response
    console.log('Users:', response.data);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    // Handle the error in case of failure
    console.error('Error fetching users:', error);
  });

In this example, we are making a GET request to the URL http://localhost:3000/usuarios to get all users.

As we can see, it is very easy to make requests to a REST API with axios.js.

Then, we handle the successful response in the .then() method and any errors in the .catch() method.

In addition to GET, axios supports other HTTP methods like POST, PUT, DELETE, among others, which can be used according to your needs. It also allows you to configure HTTP headers and send parameters in requests.

Download the code

All the code from this post is available for download on Github