API Design Best Practices

What does REST stand for?

• Representational State Transfer

REST APIs are designed around __?

• Resources

What is an identifier of a resource? Give an example

• This is a URL that uniquely identifies the target resource).

• An example given from the reading would be a customer order

What are the most common HTTP verbs?

• GET
• POST
• PUT
• PATCH
• DELETE

What should the URIs be based on?

• URIs should be based on nouns

Give an example of a good URI

      userinfo       host      port
          ┌──┴───┐ ┌──────┴──────┐ ┌┴┐
  https://john.doe@www.example.com:123/forum/questions/?tag=networking&order=newest#top
  └─┬─┘   └───────────┬──────────────┘└───────┬───────┘ └───────────┬─────────────┘ └┬┘
  scheme          authority                  path                 query           fragment

wikipedia URI

What does it mean to have a ‘chatty’ web API? Is this a good or a bad thing?

• These are web APIs that expose a large number of small resources and should be avoided.

What status code does a successful GET request return?

• 200

What status code does an unsuccessful GET request return?

• 400

What status code does a successful POST request return?

• 201 (created) or 200 (ok)

What status code does a successful DELETE request return?

• 204

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