API design with Node.JS

Question

I am designing an API with express/node, and I would like to know if one does it need to explicitly set the headers for request and/ or response or is that automatically handled? As I just read the following for RESTFUL API best practices:

Use HTTP headers for serialization formats

Both, client and server, need to know which format is used for the communication. The format has to be specified in the HTTP-Header.

Content-Type defines the request format. Accept defines a list of acceptable response formats.

https://blog.mwaysolutions.com/2014/06/05/10-best-practices-for-better-restful-api/

However I am not sure what that truly means in practice.

app.delete('/LimeLINE/api/v1/users/delete/:boolean', (req, res) => {
    let inactive;
    try {
        inactive = req.params.boolean
    } catch (e) {
        log('e', 'app.delete(/LimeLINE/api/v1/users/delete/:boolean - e - 291 : ' + e)
        return res.status(500).send({
            message: "INTERNAL SERVER ERROR"
        })
    }
    //res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json');
    user.deleteInActive(inactive, res)
})

Answer 1

If you're using Express then it does a lot of work already for you. So, you don't need to specify content-type in header as it already provides methods and handles most of the header portion ex : res.json() ; It already sets the content-type to json.

In case of handling errors, you may specify "status" property and set HttpStatus to UNAUTHORIZED , INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR, BAD_REQUEST , etc.

so you just need to use the inbuilt express functions which does all the work for you.