REST APIs, integrations and background jobs with Node.js and Express.
Node.js is often the glue in a modern stack: the API behind a Next.js frontend, the service that receives store webhooks, or the integration that syncs orders with a CRM. A small Express app is easy to write; one that stays reliable under real traffic needs a few deliberate decisions.
This path covers those decisions with Express 5 and MySQL: structure, validation, database pooling and transactions, authentication, consistent errors, rate limits, logging, tests and graceful shutdown.
Who it’s for: JavaScript and PHP developers building APIs, webhooks and integrations for stores and apps.
Start with lesson 1: Building a production REST API with Node.js and Express: validation, auth, errors and testing
Move slow work out of your Node.js API: BullMQ queues and workers on Redis, retries with backoff, concurrency and rate limits, repeatable jobs instead of cron, failed-job handling, graceful shutdown and monitoring.
How to receive webhooks from Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce and others reliably in Node.js: verifying HMAC signatures against the raw body, answering quickly, deduplicating retried events, processing in the background and debugging failures.
The parts of a Node.js API that tutorials skip: project structure, input validation with schemas, database pooling, authentication, consistent errors, rate limiting, logging, tests and graceful shutdown, with Express 5 code you can reuse.