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json-server, but hosted

json-server is brilliant for local prototyping — point it at a JSON file and you have a REST API. But the moment you need that API somewhere else, it gets awkward: your teammate has to clone and run it, your deploy preview can't reach localhost:3000, your phone can't test against your laptop, and CI needs yet another process to babysit.

Mockbird gives you the same conventions — filters, sorting, pagination, _expand/_embed relations, nested routes — as a hosted URL that exists in seconds. No install, no process to run, no tunnel. Anyone with the link gets the same data.

0. Already have a db.json? Upload it — your exact data, hosted

If you're migrating from json-server you don't want fake data, you want your data. POST your db.json as-is and Mockbird hosts it:

curl -X POST https://HOST/api/projects/import --data-binary @db.json

Each top-level key becomes a resource, numeric ids are preserved, and nested objects or arrays inside records are kept verbatim. The response gives you a baseUrl — swap http://localhost:3000 for it and your existing ?_page/?_sort/_expand calls keep working, plus you now get a request inspector and webhooks. Details and limits in the docs. Don't have a db.json handy? Read on — presets create a seeded backend from nothing.

No lock-in, ever: GET /m/<project>/db.json exports your entire live dataset back in json-server's native format. curl -o db.json it and npx json-server db.json runs the same API on your laptop — try it on the demo: curl -o db.json https://HOST/m/demo/db.json.

1. Or create a backend from nothing, in one request

No signup needed. One curl creates a project with a whole blog backend — posts, comments and authors, seeded with realistic fake data and linked by real foreign keys:

curl -X POST https://HOST/api/projects \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name":"my-blog","preset":"blog"}'

The response gives you an id, an adminKey (keep it — it's how you manage the project) and a baseUrl like https://HOST/m/abc123. That base URL is your API. Or skip curl entirely: the landing page has a one-click "try it" button and the dashboard does presets from a dropdown.

2. Everything json-server taught your fingers still works

GET /m/abc123/posts                     # list, paginated, X-Total-Count header
GET /m/abc123/posts?page=2&limit=10     # pagination (_page/_limit work too)
GET /m/abc123/posts?sortBy=date&order=desc   # or _sort/_order, json-server style
GET /m/abc123/posts?search=coffee       # substring search (q= works too)
GET /m/abc123/comments?postId=3         # exact-match filter on any field
GET /m/abc123/posts?views_gte=100       # _gte/_lte/_gt/_lt/_ne range filters too
GET /m/abc123/posts?title_like=coffee   # _like = case-insensitive substring

POST   /m/abc123/posts                  # create → next id assigned
PUT    /m/abc123/posts/3                # replace
PATCH  /m/abc123/posts/3                # merge
DELETE /m/abc123/posts/3

3. Relations: _expand, _embed, nested routes

# each comment gains a "post" object (joined via its postId)
GET /m/abc123/comments?_expand=post

# a post with its comments attached
GET /m/abc123/posts/7?_embed=comments

# path-style, json-server classic:
GET  /m/abc123/posts/1/comments         # children of post 1
POST /m/abc123/posts/1/comments         # creates with postId=1 set for you

Relations compose with filters, search, sorting and pagination, and work on list and single-record GETs alike.

4. Things json-server can't do

5. Simulate the bad days

The flag every frontend dev wants at 5pm: force the API to be slow or broken without touching code.

GET /m/abc123/posts?mock_delay=2000     # test your spinner
GET /m/abc123/posts?mock_status=500     # test your error state
GET /m/abc123/posts?mock_status=401     # test your auth redirect

Start now

Hit the "try it" button on the landing page — you'll have a live seeded API before you finish reading this sentence. Anonymous projects can be claimed into an account later, so nothing you build is throwaway.