This is an example of how to manipulate (import and use) JSON files with Nuxt 3’s server/api. The following article was used as a reference.
https://github.com/nuxt/framework/discussions/775#discussioncomment-1470136
While there is much room for improvement in areas such as type definitions, the following approach was confirmed to work.
With the above, by using a query like /api/items?page=2&size=40, it was possible to return a portion of the imported JSON file (~/assets/index.json). Paths other than assets seem to work as well, but this has not been thoroughly verified.
While there is much room for improvement, we hope this serves as a useful reference.
References
https://v3.nuxtjs.org/guide/directory-structure/server/#handling-requests-with-query-parameters