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Build an API for your front end using Pages Functions

Last reviewed: 10 days ago

In this tutorial, you will build a full-stack Pages application. Your application will contain:

  • A front end, built using Cloudflare Pages and the React framework.
  • A JSON API, built with Pages Functions, that returns blog posts that can be retrieved and rendered in your front end.

If you prefer to work with a headless CMS rather than an API to render your blog content, refer to the headless CMS tutorial.

Video Tutorial

1. Build your front end

To begin, create a new Pages application using the React framework.

Create a new React project

In your terminal, create a new React project called blog-frontend using the create-react-app command. Go into the newly created blog-frontend directory and start a local development server:

Create a new React application
npx create-react-app blog-frontend
cd blog-frontend
npm start

Set up your React project

To set up your React project:

  1. Install the React Router ↗ in the root of your blog-frontend directory.

With npm:

Terminal window
npm install react-router-dom@6

With yarn:

Terminal window
yarn add react-router-dom@6
  1. Clear the contents of src/App.js. Copy and paste the following code to import the React Router into App.js, and set up a new router with two routes:
import { Routes, Route } from "react-router-dom";


import Posts from "./components/posts";
import Post from "./components/post";


function App() {
  return (
    <Routes>
      <Route path="/" element={<Posts />} />
      <Route path="/posts/:id" element={<Post />} />
    </Routes>
  );
}


export default App;
  1. In the src directory, create a new folder called components.
  2. In the components directory, create two files: posts.js, and post.js. These files will load the blog posts from your API, and render them.
  3. Populate posts.js with the following code:
import React, { useEffect, useState } from "react";
import { Link } from "react-router-dom";


const Posts = () => {
  const [posts, setPosts] = useState([]);


  useEffect(() => {
    const getPosts = async () => {
      const resp = await fetch("/api/posts");
      const postsResp = await resp.json();
      setPosts(postsResp);
    };


    getPosts();
  }, []);


  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Posts</h1>
      {posts.map((post) => (
        <div key={post.id}>
          <h2>
            <Link to={`/posts/${post.id}`}>{post.title}</Link>
          </h2>
        </div>
      ))}
    </div>
  );
};


export default Posts;
  1. Populate post.js with the following code:
import React, { useEffect, useState } from "react";
import { Link, useParams } from "react-router-dom";


const Post = () => {
  const [post, setPost] = useState({});
  const { id } = useParams();


  useEffect(() => {
    const getPost = async () => {
      const resp = await fetch(`/api/post/${id}`);
      const postResp = await resp.json();
      setPost(postResp);
    };


    getPost();
  }, [id]);


  if (!Object.keys(post).length) return <div />;


  return (
    <div>
      <h1>{post.title}</h1>
      <p>{post.text}</p>
      <p>
        <em>Published {new Date(post.published_at).toLocaleString()}</em>
      </p>
      <p>
        <Link to="/">Go back</Link>
      </p>
    </div>
  );
};


export default Post;

2. Build your API

You will now create a Pages Functions that stores your blog content and retrieves it via a JSON API.

Write your Pages Function

To create the Pages Function that will act as your JSON API:

  1. Create a functions directory in your blog-frontend directory.
  2. In functions, create a directory named api.
  3. In api, create a posts.js file in the api directory.
  4. Populate posts.js with the following code:
import posts from "./post/data";


export function onRequestGet() {
  return Response.json(posts);
}

This code gets blog data (from data.js, which you will make in step 8) and returns it as a JSON response from the path /api/posts.

  1. In the api directory, create a directory named post.
  2. In the post directory, create a data.js file.
  3. Populate data.js with the following code. This is where your blog content, blog title, and other information about your blog lives.
const posts = [
  {
    id: 1,
    title: "My first blog post",
    text: "Hello world! This is my first blog post on my new Cloudflare Workers + Pages blog.",
    published_at: new Date("2020-10-23"),
  },
  {
    id: 2,
    title: "Updating my blog",
    text: "It's my second blog post! I'm still writing and publishing using Cloudflare Workers + Pages :)",
    published_at: new Date("2020-10-26"),
  },
];


export default posts;
  1. In the post directory, create an [[id]].js file.
  2. Populate [[id]].js with the following code:
[[id]].js
import posts from "./data";


export function onRequestGet(context) {
  const id = context.params.id;


  if (!id) {
    return new Response("Not found", { status: 404 });
  }


  const post = posts.find((post) => post.id === Number(id));


  if (!post) {
    return new Response("Not found", { status: 404 });
  }


  return Response.json(post);
}

[[id]].js is a dynamic route which is used to accept a blog post id.

3. Deploy

After you have configured your Pages application and Pages Function, deploy your project using the Wrangler or via the dashboard.

Deploy with Wrangler

In your blog-frontend directory, run wrangler pages deploy to deploy your project to the Cloudflare dashboard.

Terminal window
wrangler pages deploy blog-frontend

Deploy via the dashboard

To deploy via the Cloudflare dashboard, you will need to create a new Git repository for your Pages project and connect your Git repository to Cloudflare. This tutorial uses GitHub as its Git provider.

Create a new repository

Create a new GitHub repository by visiting repo.new ↗. After creating a new repository, prepare and push your local application to GitHub by running the following commands in your terminal:

Terminal window
git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/<YOUR-GH-USERNAME>/<REPOSITORY-NAME>
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

Deploy with Cloudflare Pages

Deploy your application to Pages:

  1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account.
  2. In Account Home, select Workers & Pages > Create application > Pages > Connect to Git.
  3. Select the new GitHub repository that you created and, in the Set up builds and deployments section, provide the following information:
Configuration optionValue
Production branchmain
Build commandnpm run build
Build directorybuild

After configuring your site, begin your first deploy. You should see Cloudflare Pages installing blog-frontend, your project dependencies, and building your site.

By completing this tutorial, you have created a full-stack Pages application.

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