Experimenting with Building a Gratuity Calculator API for My Web Project

Hey everyone,

I’ve been experimenting with small web development projects recently and decided to build a Gratuity Calculator API for learning purposes.

The idea came from exploring how different salary end-of-service computation tools work online understanding their formulas, data validation, and API logic. I wanted to replicate something similar, but in a cleaner, developer-focused way.

Here’s a simple example of the core logic I used in Node.js (Express):

const express = require('express');const app = express();app.use(express.json());app.post('/api/gratuity', (req, res) => {  const { basicSalary, yearsOfService } = req.body;  if (!basicSalary || !yearsOfService) {    return res.status(400).json({ error: 'Missing parameters' });  }  const gratuity = (basicSalary * 21 * yearsOfService) / 30;  res.json({ gratuity });});app.listen(3000, () => console.log('Server running on port 3000'));

I’ve kept it simple for now, but I’m planning to extend it with:

• Input validation (for salary/date fields)
• Dynamic country-based calculation logic
• Front-end integration for a live web calculator

Has anyone here built or deployed small APIs like this before? I’d love feedback on structuring the API, or any suggestions for hosting (Vercel vs Render etc.).

Thanks in advance!

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