APIs
We have been working on the City Explorer project for this module. Last Lab we built our own custom API server which provided ‘dummy data’ to our front-end App. This topic matters as it relates to implementing real APIs on our application.
API Design Best Practices
What does REST stand for?
Representational State Transfer (REST).
REST APIs are designed around a ____.
Resource.
What is an identifier of a resource? Give an example.
A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that uniquely identifies that resource. (e.g.) https://adventure-works.com/orders/1
What are the most common HTTP verbs?
GET, POST, PUT, PATCH and DELETE.
What should the URIs be based on?
Nouns (the resource).
Give an example of a good URI.
https://adventure-works.com/orders
What does it mean to have a ‘chatty’ web API? Is this a good or a bad thing?
Web requests impose a load on the web server. The more requests, the bigger the load. Having a ‘chatty’ API means that such API may require a client application to send multiple requests to find all of the data that it requires. It is a bad thing.
What status code does a successful GET request return?
Code 200 (OK).
What status code does an unsuccessful GET request return?
Code 404 (Not Found).
What status code does a successful POST request return?
Code 201 (Created).
What status code does a successful DELETE request return?
Code 204 (No Content).
Things I want to know more about
- I would like to know more about how to implement APIs efficiently. Their syntax and error handling.