A free, self-paced textbook in 7 chapters. Read a chapter, then drill it with the 50 companion flashcards using spaced repetition.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...