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Want to know more about Medusa

[Medusa](https://medusajs.com/) is an open source headless commerce platform built using Node.js. It aims to provide developers with a great experience and limitless customization capabilities.

The core of Medusa is the headless server. It exposes a [set of APIs](https://docs.medusajs.com/api/store/auth/) that the other 2 components, admin and storefront, can use to connect to the server and access or manipulate data.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create custom endpoints on your Medusa server for both the storefront and admin.

## Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes you already have a Medusa server installed. If not, you can follow the [Quickstart guide](https://docs.medusajs.com/quickstart/quick-start) to get started in a few minutes.

## Overview

Custom endpoints reside under the `src/api` directory in your Medusa Backend. To define a new endpoint, you can add the file `index.js` under the `src/api` directory. This file should export a function that returns an Express router.

Your endpoint can be under any path you wish.

### **Storefront Endpoint**

By Medusa’s conventions, all Storefront REST APIs are prefixed by `/store`. For example, the `/store/products` lets you retrieve the products to display them on your storefront.

### Admin Endpoint

By Medusa’s conventions, all Admin REST APIs are prefixed by `/admin`. For example, the `/admin/products` lets you retrieve the products to display them on your Admin.

## Implementation

To create a new endpoint, start by creating a new file in `src/api` called `index.js`. At its basic format, `index.js` should look something like this:

```jsx
import { Router } from "express"

export default () => {
  const router = Router()

  router.get("/hello", (req, res) => {
    res.json({
      message: "Welcome to Your Store!",
    })
  })

  return router
}
```

This endpoint is accessible under the path `/hello`. If you want to create an endpoint for the storefront and follow Medusa’s conventions you can prefix the path with `/store`:

```jsx
router.get("/store/hello", (req, res) => {
```

Similarly, you can create an endpoint for the admin and follow Medusa’s conventions by prefixing the path with `/admin`:

```jsx
router.get("/admin/hello", (req, res) => {
```

## Making Endpoints Accessible from the Admin

If you’re customizing the admin dashboard or creating your own, you need to use the `cors` library. An `OPTIONS` request should be added for each route and handle the requests with the `cors` library.

First, you need to import your Medusa’s configurations along with the `cors` library:

```jsx
import cors from "cors"
import { projectConfig } from "../../medusa-config"
```

Then, create an object that holds the CORS configurations:

```jsx
const corsOptions = {
  origin: projectConfig.admin_cors.split(","),
  credentials: true,
}
```

Finally, for each route you add, create an `OPTIONS` request:

```jsx
router.options("/admin/hello", cors(corsOptions))
router.get("/admin/hello", (req, res) => {
  //...
})
```

## Multiple Endpoints

### **Same File**

You can add more than one endpoints in `src/api/index.js`:

```jsx
router.get("/admin/hello", (req, res) => {
  res.json({
    message: "Welcome to Your Store!",
  })
})

router.get("/admin/bye", (req, res) => {
  res.json({
    message: "Come back again!",
  })
})
```

### Multiple Files

Alternatively, you can add multiple files for each endpoint or set of endpoints for readability and easy maintenance.

To do that with the previous example, first, create the file `src/api/hello.js` with the following content:

```jsx
export default (router) => {
  router.get("/admin/hello", (req, res) => {
    res.json({
      message: "Welcome to Your Store!",
    })
  })
}
```

You export a function that receives an Express router as a parameter and adds the endpoint `admin/hello` to it.

Next, create the file `src/api/bye.js` with the following content:

```jsx
export default (router) => {
  router.get("/admin/bye", (req, res) => {
    res.json({
      message: "Come back again!",
    })
  })
}
```

Again, you export a function that receives an Express router as a parameter and adds the endpoint `admin/bye` to it.

Finally, in `src/api/index.js` import the two functions at the beginning of the file:

```jsx
import helloRoute from "./hello"
import byeRoute from "./bye"
```

and in the exported function, call each of the functions passing them the Express router:

```jsx
export default () => {
  const router = Router()

  helloRoute(router)
  byeRoute(router)

  return router
}
```

## Use Services

[Services](https://docs.medusajs.com/advanced/backend/services/create-service) in Medusa bundle a set of functionalities related to a model into one class. Then, you can use that class anywhere in your backend. For example, you can use the `ProductService` to retrieve products or perform operations like creating or updating a product.

You can retrieve any registered service in your endpoint using `req.scope.resolve` passing it the service’s registration name.

Here’s an example of an endpoint that retrieves the count of products in your store:

```jsx
router.get("/admin/products/count", (req, res) => {
  const productService = req.scope.resolve("productService")

  productService.count().then((count) => {
    res.json({
      count,
    })
  })
})
```

The `productService` has a `count` method that returns a Promise. This Promise resolves to the count of the products. You return a JSON of the product count.

## Protected Routes for

Protected routes are routes that should be accessible by logged-in users only.

To make a route protected, first, import the `authenticate` middleware:

```jsx
import authenticate from "@medusajs/medusa/dist/api/middlewares/authenticate"
```

Then, add the middleware to your route:

```jsx
router.get("/store/products/count", authenticate(), (req, res) => {
  //...
})
```

Now, only authenticated customers or users can access this endpoint.

### Accessing Current Customer

You can get the logged-in customer’s ID using `req.user`:

```jsx
const id = req.user.customer_id
```

To get the customer’s details, you can use the `customerService`:

```jsx
const id = req.user.customer_id
const customerService = req.scope.resolve("customerService")

const customer = await customerService.retrieve(id)
```

### Accessing Current User

You can get the logged-in user ID using `req.user`:

```jsx
const id = req.user.userId
```

To get the user’s details, you can use the `userService`:

```jsx
const id = req.user.userId
const userService = req.scope.resolve("userService")

const user = await userService.retrieve(id)
```

## Route Parameters

The routes you create receive 2 parameters. The first one is the absolute path to the root directory that your server is running from. The second one is an object that has your plugin's options. If your API route is not implemented in a plugin, then it will be an empty object.

```jsx
export default (rootDirectory, pluginOptions) => {
  const router = Router()

  //...
}
```

## What’s Next?

Endpoints are just one essential part of Medusa’s architecture. Here are more resources to learn more about Medusa’s server and how to customize it:

- [What are subscribers and how to create them?](https://docs.medusajs.com/advanced/backend/subscribers/create-subscriber)
- [What are services and how to create them?](https://docs.medusajs.com/advanced/backend/services/create-service)
- [How to create a payment provider?](https://docs.medusajs.com/advanced/backend/payment/how-to-create-payment-provider/)

> Should you have any issues or questions related to Medusa, then feel free to reach out to the Medusa team via [Discord](https://discord.gg/F87eGuwkTp).

How to Create Custom Endpoints in Medusa

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a comic book store with Medusa and add important ecommerce features.

How to Create a Comic Book Online Store with Medusa, Gatsby, PayPal, and MeiliSearch

In this part, you’ll learn how to link orders to their respective stores in a marketplace.

Medusa Open Source Marketplace Part 2: Make Orders Vendor Specific


With Hacktober coming to an end, we would like to take a moment to appreciate the overwhelming support and contributions we've seen the past month. It was our debut in this year's fest, and we feel like we've kicked the door in with our powerful community.

## Hacktober 2021 community achievements

We are incredibly humbled by the participation of so many new and existing community members over this past month. As a young company, it is incredible to see how old, more experienced community members helped guide new ones getting started while others teamed up to find solutions and helped extend the plugin suite of Medusa.

In the end, the effort led to the production of almost 100 pull requests and three new plugins. Likewise, many new developers joined our community, and we are excited to see you build more with Medusa in the future.

A quick glimpse of the results achieved during this October:

- \~100% new Discord members
- 64 merged pull requests
- 21 pull requests in review

Plugins in development:

- Strapi
- Algolia
- Elastic
- ShipBob

We are grateful for all your contributions!

## Time to give back

**Swag.** As described in the [Hacktoberfest announcement article](https://dev.to/medusajs/medusa-hacktoberfest-2021-13eb), every contributor will receive special Medusa swag as an appreciation gift. Our small token of gratitude to all of you that took the time to participate in the Hacktober. The send-outs will happen during November - we cannot wait to send them out.

**Wall of appreciation.** Our [website](https://www.medusajs.com/) will soon feature a wall of appreciation displaying all Medusa contributors. There is no fix or feature too small for this wall, so no reason to hold back if you want to see yourself in there.

**Community chat.** At last, we wanted to invite you all to an in-person Zoom chat on Friday the 5th of November. Here we will gladly welcome everyone from our community to a chat about commerce, Medusa, and all things community-related. For more info, please follow along in our [Discord](https://discord.gg/F87eGuwkTp) during the following days.

![Medusa merch](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/rgs81mhjdonw81gf7v6k.png)

### There is still an opportunity to be involved in Medusa development

The opportunity to contribute and get involved in the development process of Medusa is not limited to Hacktoberfest. We will keep welcoming new community members just as we've done the past month. You can follow our [contribution guide](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) to get started.

We strive to always have issues that are up for grabs so that everyone can take part. If you have your ideas or feature requests, you can find the entire Medusa team on our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/WCZFV5v3j4).

Hope to see you there!
