APIs

API Design Best Practices

1. What does REST stand for?
   • representational state transfer
2. REST APIs are designed around a what?
   • resources (any kind of object, data, or service that can be accessed by the client)
3. What is an identifer of a resource? Give an example.
   • a website URL
4. What are the most common HTTP verbs?
   • GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE.
5. What should the URIs be based on?
   • nouns (the resource) not verbs (operations on the resource)
6. Give an example of a good URI.
   • school.edu/students/account/billing
7. What does it mean to have a ‘chatty’ web API?
   • an api that exposes a large number of small resources
8. Is this a good or a bad thing?
   • bad thing bc it requires the web server to make many requests when only one would be better
9. What status code does a successful GET request return?
   • 200
10. What status code does an unsuccessful GET request return?
    • 404
11. What status code does a successful POST request return?
    • 201
12. What status code does a successful DELETE request return?
    • 204