reading-notes

APIs

What does REST stand for?
- Representational State Transfer
REST APIs are designed around __.
- resources, which are any kind of object, data, or service that can be accessed by the client
What is an identifier of a resource? Give an example.
- URI
- https://adventure-works.com/orders/1
What are the most common HTTP verbs?
- GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE.
What should the URIs be based on?
- nouns (the resource) and not verbs (the operations on the resource)
Give an example of a good URI.
- https://adventure-works.com/orders
What does it mean to have a ‘chatty’ web API? Is this a good or a bad thing?
- probably a bad thing as chatty APIs return a large number of small resources, increasing the number of requests required
- however returning too much unneeded data will increase latency
What status code does a successful GET request return?
- A successful GET method typically returns HTTP status code 200 (OK)
What status code does an unsuccessful GET request return?
- If the resource cannot be found, the method should return 404 (Not Found)
What status code does a successful POST request return?
- If a POST method creates a new resource, it returns HTTP status code 201 (Created)
What status code does a successful DELETE request return?
- If the delete operation is successful, the web server should respond with HTTP status code 204 (No Content)