Understanding RESTful API Design: Principles, Examples, and Best Practices

Table Of Content

• OpenAPI versions v2.0 vs. v3.0
• Most Common Codes to Use For HTTP Requests
• Moesif Integration and Naming Conventions:
• Elements of REST API design
• Get set up with LogRocket's modern error tracking in minutes:
• Restful API Design
• Use Plural Nouns For Name Collections
• API for Dummies: Your Easy Guide to Understanding APIs

If the API sets many flags or does many tasks simultaneously, it should be split into multiple APIs. The response is always in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. You can't link to the shelves – the database – because they can't move or talk. The seller serves as an intermediary between you and the item – the data (soda) – you want. But you can't just walk in and take one because you are an outsider – an external user – so you need a link (talking to someone and paying for your soda) to get what you want.

OpenAPI versions v2.0 vs. v3.0

RESTful APIs tutorial: Learn key web service design principles - TheServerSide.com

RESTful APIs tutorial: Learn key web service design principles.

Posted: Sat, 07 Jul 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]

You may even be able to connect these tools to your CI/CD workflow, so that as your new API hits production, so does your new API documentation. Well-documented APIs are more likely to have higher adoption and better user experience. API documentation is one critical component to good design. Tooling built around the OpenAPI specification can help in the very early stages of design, throughout the life of an API, and even as you consider versioning and deprecation. Even for an internal project, you’re likely to have multiple consumers. An API spec allows you to share details about how the API will work.

Most Common Codes to Use For HTTP Requests

Express.js is another REST API framework for Node.js that enables developers to create a response object and program custom responses to GET, PUT, DELETE. Then, they can simply call a specific port number using the .listen command. API design is the process of making intentional decisions about how an API will expose data and functionality to its consumers. A successful API design describes the API's endpoints, methods, and resources in a standardized specification format. To enhance your Next.js application with persistent data storage, you'll likely want to connect to a database. This setup enables your API routes to perform CRUD operations—create, read, update, and delete data—based on requests received from the frontend.

Moesif Integration and Naming Conventions:

It's also a good practice to name the service methods the same as the controller methods so that you have a connection between those. The other folders like controllers or services still remain inside our src directory. That is okay for now because we are building a rather small API. We can use the same controllers and services in each version globally.

Organizations with high design maturity experience better quality outcomes for their end users, faster time to market, and better innovation. That’s why this API design guide assists in supporting good design throughout your API creation process; good API design leads to better overall APIs. I used to rely on POST for create, and either ignore PUT completely in favor of PATCH, or (shame on me) implemented only half the function of PUT (update but not create). Recently I have been working on some APIs where there is a requirement that clients be able to synchronize the state of the API from a set of external files.

Design-first becomes clearer when you consider the alternative. If you go straight into building your API, there’s no returning to design. That’s like constructing a house and then going to an architect to draw up plans. When you design your API alongside a description, you always have the artifact to communicate what’s possible with your API. The design-first approach offers a single source of truth, readable by collaborators and machines alike.

Restful API Design

If this is true, we filter all those workouts that have got the same "mode". If this is not true, then there is no query parameter called "mode" and we return all workouts because we don't need to filter. I'm using the shorthand syntax here, to create a new key called "mode" inside the object with the value of whatever is in "req.query.mode". This could be either a truthy value or undefined if there isn't a query parameter called "mode". We can extend this object the more filter parameters we'd like to accept.

Use Plural Nouns For Name Collections

We then extract the property values by destructuring the individual query parameters into variables using the JavaScript destructuring syntax. Finally, we run filter on with each query parameter value to locate the items that we want to return. Filtering and pagination both increase performance by reducing the usage of server resources. As more data accumulates in the database, the more important these features become.

This is my personal take when creating an API error message. Let's say some user data has a maximum character length of 5, and an external user queries the API for user data with a character length of 8. Suppose you are creating an API that sends you the data of a particular user. Every application is prone to errors, which is why error handling is so important. A good API should always return the proper HTTP error code that correctly explains the nature of the specific error that has occurred. To make sure that the REST API is using the JSON format, always set the Content-Type in the response header to application/JSON.

The second is to provide clients with a rule for transforming the URL of a resource into the URL of one of its versions. Let's start with integrating some filtering mechanism into our API. We will upgrade our endpoint that sends all workouts by accepting filter parameters. Normally in a GET request we add the filter criteria as a query parameter. If we try to add a new workout but forget to provide the "mode" property in our request body, we should see the error message along with the 400 HTTP error code.

Below is an example of the standard error messages in each error code. Here already the GET method is self-sufficient to let us know we are retrieving a collection of students’ data. Below are some of the industry standards and API design best practices you can use to develop your RESTful APIs. The API design best practices in this article if followed will help you achieve the best APIs which help to serve and give your API consumer’s best experience. So in this article, we are going to be looking at API design best practices that can be followed while designing a REST API. On the other hand, the backend also known as the server-side is the aspect of the web application that is not visible to the user.