Rest Api
Rest API#
API#
Application Programming Interface
API lets other devices or apps interact with out app over HTTP.
REST#
Representational State Transfer
Client remembers state, server will not maintain state as HTTP is stateless
Nouns - Resources (Model in the application) eg. Player, Score, Match. Retrieved, created, modified and deleted. Verbs - Actions taken on resources. Represented by the type of request:
- GET - fetching a single or multple
- POST - create a new resource
- PUT - When updating a record
- DELETE - when deleting a record
Endpoints - represent a single resources, or multiple of same resources
Resource Name should be plural
Keeping uri and resource names consistant goes a long way towards maintainability and usability of the API
Querystring#
Early API’s used the querystring to set additional parameters for the request
/api/v1/games?order=desc&sort=points
But it is better the use HTTP Headers
- Accept - specifies the file format
- Accept-Language - specifies human readable language
- Cache-Control - from cache or not
Accept: application/json
Post requests encode data as form-data or x-www-encoded, whereas GET request data is all in the uri or querystring
Version#
You should always add a version and keep the old API around as long as possible
v1
HTTP Response#
A response also has headers
Specify content type extension
Content-Type: text/javascript
- Last-Modified - see when last modified
- expires - how long data can be trusted
- status - status codes tell us the state of the content and tell us the state of the request