REST API Design

Representational state transfer (REST) is a architectural style for creating web services.

This page contains a summary of my REST related posts.

HTTP basics

While REST does not require any specific protocol or technology it is typically used with HTTP and JSON or XML as data format. Therefore, it is useful to have a solid understanding of HTTP before building REST APIs.

• HTTP methods: Idempotency and Safety
• HTTP methods: POST vs. PUT vs. PATCH
• Common HTTP Status codes

Basic CRUD operations

Create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operations are commonly used on REST resources.

• Creating Resources
• Retrieving Resources
• Updating Resources
• Deleting Resources
• Partial updates with PATCH

Advanced Operations

CRUD operations are a good start but often a bit more is needed. Here, we look at asynchronous processing, event feeds and more.

• Working with asynchronous operations
• Using feeds to publish events
• Supporting bulk operations
• Dealing with concurrent updates
• Making POST and PATCH requests idempotent
• File down- and uploads in RESTful web services

Managing Collections

• Dealing with Pagination
• Sorting Collections

Managing Relations

• Managing One-To-Many relations
• Managing Many-To-Many relations

Hypermedia and HATEOAS

• Introduction to Hypermedia REST-APIs
• HATEOAS without Links