API Design & REST

REST Fundamentals

30 دقيقة

An API (application programming interface) lets programs talk to your application: a mobile app, a frontend, a partner's server or a no-code automation. REST is the most common style for web APIs: everything is a resource identified by a URL, manipulated with standard HTTP methods.

Resources and URLs

Use nouns, plural, lowercase, with hyphens:

GET    /v1/projects                 list projects
POST   /v1/projects                 create a project
GET    /v1/projects/42              get one project
PATCH  /v1/projects/42              update part of it
DELETE /v1/projects/42              delete it
GET    /v1/projects/42/reviews      reviews belonging to project 42

Avoid verbs in URLs (/getProjects, /deleteProject?id=42). For actions that are not simple CRUD, use a sub-resource: POST /v1/orders/7/refunds.

Methods and their meaning

Method	Purpose	Safe	Idempotent
GET	read	yes	yes
POST	create / action	no	no
PUT	replace entirely	no	yes
PATCH	partial update	no	usually
DELETE	remove	no	yes

Safe means no side effects (GET must never change data). Idempotent means repeating the request has the same effect as doing it once, which matters when clients retry after timeouts.

Status codes

Code	Use when
200 OK	successful read or update
201 Created	resource created (include a `Location` header)
204 No Content	success with no body (often DELETE)
400 Bad Request	malformed input
401 Unauthorized	missing or invalid credentials
403 Forbidden	authenticated but not allowed
404 Not Found	does not exist (or you should not know it does)
409 Conflict	duplicate, or a state conflict
422 Unprocessable Entity	valid JSON but failed validation
429 Too Many Requests	rate limited (include `Retry-After`)
500 / 503	server error / temporarily unavailable

JSON conventions

Pick one style and use it everywhere: snake_case or camelCase keys, ISO 8601 dates in UTC ("2026-10-21T09:30:00Z"), money as integer minor units plus a currency code, and IDs as strings if they may exceed JavaScript's safe integer range.

{
  "id": "42",
  "title": "Salon booking app",
  "price": {"amount": 4900, "currency": "usd"},
  "created_at": "2026-10-21T09:30:00Z"
}

Check yourself

Why should GET never change data?
What is the difference between 401 and 403?
How should an API represent money?

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