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API Routes

Creating API Routes

API Routes let you create an API endpoint inside a Next.js app. You can do so by creating a function inside the pages/api directory that has the following format:

// req = HTTP incoming message, res = HTTP server response
export default function handler(req, res) {
  // ...
}

Learn more about the request handler above in the API Routes documentation.

They can be deployed as Serverless Functions (also known as Lambdas).

Creating a simple API endpoint

Let’s try it out. Create a file called hello.js in pages/api with the following code:

export default function handler(req, res) {
  res.status(200).json({ text: 'Hello' });
}

Try accessing it at http://localhost:3000/api/hello. You should see {"text":"Hello"}. Note that:

That’s it! Before we wrap up this lesson, let’s talk about some tips for using API Routes on the next page.