Tuesday, April 30, 2024

The REST API Handbook How to Build, Test, Consume, and Document REST APIs

restful api design

The bearer token is typically an encrypted string of characters that the server generates in response to a login request. The client sends the token in the request headers to access resources. In REST architecture, statelessness refers to a communication method in which the server completes every client request independently of all previous requests. Clients can request resources in any order, and every request is stateless or isolated from other requests.

6. Code on Demand (Optional)

In our case I'd like to create a sub folder for each version inside our src directory called v1. After that we'll be extending the API with each best practice. Before we start implementing the best practices into our example project, I'd like to give you a brief introduction to what we'll be building. Representational State Transfer (REST) is a software architecture that imposes conditions on how an API should work. REST was initially created as a guideline to manage communication on a complex network like the internet.

Why use Postman for API design?

We need to always keep in mind that the API design should be full proof and fool proof. Now let’s understand the principles we should follow while designing the RESTful APIs. A simple string manipulation might look for the third line, strip out the XML and put it into a Firstname variable, then look at the fourth, do the same and put it into Lastname variable. When the other application introduces a MiddleName field, the application will not error; instead it will report the LastName as the middle name. The API is a public API, JSONPlaceholder, so the code works natively in most modern versions of Python. On a Mac or Linux system, you can save this as a text file called "get.py" and then run pything get.py from the command line to see it execute.

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Similarly, a server application shouldn't modify the client application other than passing it to the requested data via HTTP. REST API, an acronym for representational state transfer, is an architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems. It is a flexible method of designing APIs in a way that follows a certain protocol. It can be used both in the browser and on the server, and is often used in conjunction with React applications. React is a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

API Design Reviews Are Dead. Long Live API Design Reviews! - InfoQ.com

API Design Reviews Are Dead. Long Live API Design Reviews!.

Posted: Mon, 22 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

5. Create a device or configuration

What is REST API (RESTful API)? - TechTarget

What is REST API (RESTful API)?.

Posted: Mon, 24 Jan 2022 22:42:00 GMT [source]

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a widely used architectural style for building web services and APIs. For example, a REST resource can be a document or image, a temporal service, a collection of other resources, or a non-virtual object (e.g., a person). To design an API, you must first have a clear understanding of the API's intended use case. You should then define the API's contract with a specification, validate your assumptions with mocks and tests, and clearly document every resource, method, parameter, and path. It's also important to collaborate with other stakeholders throughout the entire process. The API design process benefits both consumers and producers by ensuring that APIs support business objectives while remaining easy to use, adaptable, testable, and well-documented.

To ensure that APIs are efficient, scalable, and easy to understand, they must be carefully designed. While you don't want to design your APIs for vaporware, thinking about the big picture can make it easier to build non-breaking changes in the future. For example the image below showcases APIs offered by Google Maps. Even without diving into the documentation, looking at the names like “Autocomplete” or “Address Validation” clearly outlines the purposes and potential fit for a customer’s use case. There isn’t a single approach to API design that will work for every organization. The above suggestions are just that — advice and recommendations which can be used or discarded depending on your user case and requirement.

Like the other architectural styles, REST also has its guiding principles and constraints. These principles must be satisfied if a service interface has to be referred to as RESTful. When you make a REST API, you need to help clients (consumers) learn and figure out how to use it correctly. The best way to do this is by providing good documentation for the API. If this happens, retrieving data from such a database could be very slow.

Foster sub-second end-to-end response times

Let’s decide all the applications’ possible operations and map those operations to the resource URIs. As it is the subset of primary collection, DO NOT create a different representation data field than primary collection. Opposite to collection URI, a single resource URI includes complete information about a particular device.

1. Uniform Interface

restful api design

Using a data cache is also a great practice to improve the overall experience and performance of our API. We're extracting "mode" from the req.query object and defining a parameter of workoutService.getAllWorkouts. This will be an object that consists of our filter parameters. Imagine the frontend also needs an endpoint to get information about which member exactly holds the current record and wants to receive metadata about them. Now we're able to create a new route in our workout router and direct the request to our record service.

On top of that, they also can add some important training tips for each workout. Clients use GET to access resources that are located at the specified URL on the server. They can cache GET requests and send parameters in the RESTful API request to instruct the server to filter data before sending.

But under the hood our controller layer talks now with our service layer. In our example the box is a collection that stores different workouts. Another reason for that could be that we might change a service that is used by all other versions. So it would be a wise decision to move the services folder also into a specific version folder.

The last step in the API design process is to write documentation. Documentation might also include examples of API requests and responses, which give consumers crucial insight into how a particular API supports common business needs. Some tools can automatically generate documentation from an API definition, so teams don't have to worry about their documentation becoming outdated. Swagger provides a comprehensive set of features for API development, including API design, documentation, testing, and code generation.

As you might have seen, documenting your API must not always be a headache. I think the tools I introduced you to reduce your overall effort, and setting it all up is pretty straightforward. We're using "$ref" to create a reference and are referencing the path to our schema we've defined inside our workout file. We've defined all the properties that make up a workout including the type and an example.

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