Building apis that don’t suck!
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Some basic guidelines inspired by the book "Build APIs you won't hate" as well as personal API endeavors.
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Building apis that don’t suck!
- 1. Building APIs that don’t suck! (To be taken with a grain of salt)
- 2. Why?
- 3. Endpoint Theory Noun vs Verb POST /users POST /users/create
- 4. Resources are Nouns Verbs can be made Nouns POST /users/123/checkin POST /users/123/checkins
- 5. Endpoint Theory contd... Singular vs Plural GET /users/1,GET /users GET /user/1, GET /users
- 6. Use HTTP Verbs appropriately GET Retrieve GET /users/123 POST Create POST /users PUT Replace PUT /users/123 PATCH Update PATCH /users/123 DELET E Delete DELETE /users/123
- 7. Resource Relationships - keep it simple GET /users/1/checkins GET /users/1/checkins/123 GET /checkins/123
- 8. Use HTTP Status Codes appropriately 2xx Success 200(OK), 202(Created) 3xx Redirect 301(Redirect), 303(Moved Permanently) 4xx Client Error 400(Bad Req), 401(Unauthorized), 404(Not Found), 422(Unprocessable) 5xx Server Error 500(Internal Err)
- 9. Payload Design - think of the user { "data": { "type": "entity_type" "attributes": { .... } } } { "errors": { "status": 422, "title": "Bad api call", "detail": "Details...” } }
- 10. HATEOAS & being RESTful 1. Content Negotiation Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State GET /configs HTTP Header: Accept: application/x-yaml
- 11. HATEOAS & being RESTful 2. Hypermedia Controls "data": { "type": "users" "attributes": { .... }, "links": [ { "rel": "self", "uri": "/users/1" }, { "rel": "checkins", "uri": "/users/1/checkins" }] }
- 12. FAQ Versioning - Semantic Versioning (http://semver.org) Documentation - Slate or Swagger Testing - JSON-Schema validation Standards - JSON-API, but I can’t recommend it! UGLY Parts - Filtering, Foreign-Key relations, Sideloading GraphQL - Not a REST API, Infinite API
- 13. Take Away API Be thoughtful when designing APIs Follow good practices Stay consistent Try not to break it (Semantic versioning) TLC
- 14. Thank you “Life is short.. Work somewhere awesome” http://www.enova.com
Editor's Notes
- I wanted to get myself to read the book. So I signed up for an Enova tech tech talk, where I work.
- Prefer nouns to verbs to represent endpoints. Why? Because URLs represent a Resource which lives on the Internet. It’s a thing (noun)
- You can still make a verb into a noun if needed. Eg. checkin is an action but checkins a list of checkins. Like a verb but Likes a noun.
- Use Plural. Don’t use both. It’s more consistent and less ambiguous
- Verbs exist in the REST world. But use the HTTP built-ins to achieve it.
- Best not to go more than 1 level deep. If you need to do the 2nd example, do the last one instead
- Use HTTP status to convey how things went. Make a best effort to use the correct http status code (even though there are overlapping codes)
- Highly subjective, but try to come up with a payload design and try to be consistent. This design is inspired by json-api. Why not json-api? It can get too complex and ugly
- It ain’t RESTful if it doesn’t have HATEOAS. That’s what Roy Fielding, the inventor or REST says. Content negotiation not a big deal these days since it’s pretty much json.
- However supporting hypermedia links is important. It promotes organic API discoverability.
- Times almost up. The one I spent some time talking about is API testing via json-schema. I think it can be used to address most of API testing. If you want to be exact then use more exact matching of data against a golden file but IMHO that isn’t really needed here.
- Good API design is important. It imputes thoughtfulness into a well designed system (even if that is not the case :). Don’t think of APIs as web page replacements. Instead think of them as schemas and data. Thinking of good API designs may invite to re-evaluate current design decisions and set you on a path to simplicity nirvana.