1. Foundations of REST
REST, or Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style for designing scalable web APIs that leverages the standard HTTP protocol. At its heart, a REST API exposes reso...
Read full chapter →The essential Rest API Design cheat sheet: 7 concise chapters you can read in minutes, distilled from the full deck. When you're ready, drill the flashcards or test yourself under exam conditions.
REST, or Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style for designing scalable web APIs that leverages the standard HTTP protocol. At its heart, a REST API exposes reso...
Read full chapter →HTTP methods express the intended action on a resource, and choosing the right one is central to a clean REST design. GET retrieves a representation of a resource, POST creates a n...
Read full chapter →Well-designed URIs make an API feel intuitive to navigate. The dominant convention is hierarchical, noun-based paths that use plural nouns for collections, such as /users/123/order...
Read full chapter →Status codes are the API's primary vocabulary for outcomes, and using them precisely saves clients from parsing message bodies to understand what happened. The 2xx range covers suc...
Read full chapter →JSON has become the de facto response format for REST APIs thanks to its compactness, readability, and near-universal language support. While XML and other formats are still possib...
Read full chapter →Most APIs eventually have to handle large collections, expensive operations, or many small requests, and a handful of patterns cover these needs. Pagination splits a large result s...
Read full chapter →REST APIs inherit the same threat landscape as any web service, and security must be designed in from the start. The foundation is HTTPS, which protects credentials and payloads in...
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