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What are the best practices for an API?
In this week’s API best practices, we’re going to cover how to ensure that developers understand exactly what happened with their API call by using the appropriate HTTP Status Codes (something that is often times missed), as well as by returning descriptive error messages on failure.
What are the response codes for REST API?
Rest API Response Codes. 1 500 – Internal Server Error. 2 501 – Not Implemented. 3 502 – Bad Gateway. 4 503 – Service Unavailable. 5 504 – Gateway Timeout. 6 505 – HTTP Version Not Supported. 7 506 – Variant Also Negotiates. 8 507 – Insufficient Storage. 9 508 – Loop Detected. 10 510 – Not Extended.
What should errors be associated with an API call?
For an API, errors are a great way to provide context to using an API. Align your errors around the standard HTTP codes. Incorrect, client side calls should have 400-type errors associated with them. If there are any server side errors, then a suitable 500 response must be associated with them.
What are the status codes for an API?
While other protocols exist and have their own system of codes, the HTTP Status Codes dominate API communication, and vendor-specific codes are likely to be derived from these ranges. The 1XX range has two basic functionalities.
However, many of the principles, such as pagination and security, can be applied to GraphQL also. These are list of articles or api-guide covers general best practices. Then in each section below, we’ll cover each topic in more depth.
What are the inputs and parameters of an API?
Many APIs have inputs, aka. parameters. There are so many ways to pass parameters to APIs: headers, query parameters, request bodies. This article below covers best practices for which one to chose.
What are the design principles of RESTful APIs?
Here are some of the main design principles of RESTful APIs using HTTP: REST APIs are designed around resources, which are any kind of object, data, or service that can be accessed by the client. A resource has an identifier, which is a URI that uniquely identifies that resource.
How is the uniform interface used in REST APIs?
REST APIs use a uniform interface, which helps to decouple the client and service implementations. For REST APIs built on HTTP, the uniform interface includes using standard HTTP verbs to perform operations on resources. The most common operations are GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE.