Deleting

Part of the REST APIs section of Coddy's Node.js journey. Lesson 4 of 18.

After a delete there is nothing left to show the client. The answer for that is 204 No Content: the request worked and the body is empty.

DELETE /api/events/5   →  204 No Content
DELETE /api/events/5   →  404 Not Found

The second request finds no event 5, so it answers 404 like a GET for an unknown id. To remove an item from an array, find its position with findIndex, which gives -1 when nothing matches, and cut it out with splice:

events.splice(index, 1);   // remove 1 item at index
res.status(204).end();     // a status and no body

Challenge

Easy

DELETE /api/tasks/:id removes the task and answers 204 with no body.
An unknown id answers 404 with { "error": "Task not found" }.

Send DELETE /api/tasks/3 twice, then GET /api/tasks.

Try it yourself

import { Router } from 'express';
import { nextId, tasks } from '../store.js';

const router = Router();

router.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.json(tasks);
});

router.get('/:id', (req, res) => {
    const task = tasks.find((t) => t.id === Number(req.params.id));
    if (!task) {
        return res.status(404).json({ error: 'Task not found' });
    }
    res.json(task);
});

router.post('/', (req, res) => {
    const { title } = req.body ?? {};
    if (!title) {
        return res.status(400).json({ error: 'title is required' });
    }
    const task = { id: nextId(), title, done: false, createdAt: new Date().toISOString() };
    tasks.push(task);
    res.status(201).location(`/api/tasks/${task.id}`).json(task);
});

router.patch('/:id', (req, res) => {
    const task = tasks.find((t) => t.id === Number(req.params.id));
    if (!task) {
        return res.status(404).json({ error: 'Task not found' });
    }
    const { title, done } = req.body ?? {};
    if (title !== undefined) task.title = title;
    if (done !== undefined) task.done = done;
    res.json(task);
});

export default router;