Hi guys, i am creating a portfolio website with Next 13 using the new app directory and i am trying to introduce a database and authentication into my project by first testing my api endpoints using postman however all i seem to be getting back is a Not Found 404 page

I have followed the docs precisely making sure i create my folder structure correctly using a route.js file:

app/api/projects/route.js

I created another folder called projects inside of the api folder just to separate my resource endpoints. Inside of route.js i declared a route handler for a GET request which makes a fetch to the endpoint (http://localhost:8080/projects) created by json-server package (a local json file containing some of my projects) and inside the handler i return the data by using the json method on the NextResponse object:

import { NextResponse } from "next/server"

export async function GET() {
  const res = await fetch('http://localhost:8080/projects')
  const projects = await res.json()

  return NextResponse.json(projects, {
    status: 200
  })
}

In postman i make a request to the api endpoint provided by my local dev server (http://localhost:3000/api/projects) which should return my projects data

I have been over and over reading docs and i have checked and double checked for any typo's and everything seems to be done correctly and this is really basic stuff


What I've tried so far..
I've tried removing the /projects folder and just having the route path (http://localhost:3000/api)
I've tried Next 12 way of doing it using the pages folder in the root dir

pages/api/index.js

and in index using a default export:

export default function handler(req, res) {
  res.status(200).json({ message: 'Hello from Next.js!' })
}

I still get Not Found 404

I am half way through my website and i am now considering to abandon this approach and maybe use Firebase or another service instead to handle the back end

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated