Thread by @Rapid_API

Best practices for designing REST APIs.

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The abbreviation REST stands for "REpresentational State Transfer".

REST APIs are used to call resources and allow the software to communicate based on standardized principles, properties, and constraints.

1️⃣ Correct status codes

When developing REST APIs, make sure you use the HTTP status code. This helps your user to know if the request they have made is successful or not.

There are a lot of HTTP status codes. But here are the most common ones:

200Ok
400Bad Request
403Forbidden
404Not Found
500 Internal Server Error

Implement at least these five while building a REST API

2️⃣ Using JSON

JSON is commonly used to exchange data between client and server. Although it is derived from JavaScript, it is supported by other major languages, either natively or through libraries.

So using JSON for accepting and responding to requests is the best practice.

3️⃣ Nested Endpoints

Nested endpoints are the best practice if nested points are related to the endpoint.

Let's, you can get a list of all the cars using /cars endpoint. If you want to see the cars based on the car manufacturer, you should use an endpoint like /cars/manufacturer.

4️⃣ Using SSL Certificate

You can achieve the security of your application by adding a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate. By doing this, you will use HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP and make your site less vulnerable to any malicious attacks.

5️⃣ Versioning Your REST API

You should version your REST API if you are introducing any breaking changes. This way, your clients can still access the old version, and their products will not break as soon as you launch a new release.

And that's pretty much it for this thread.

You can visit RapidAPI Hub (RapidAPI.com/hub?utm_source…) and play around with thousands of REST APIs. 😉