REST API Design & Build

Design First, Code Second

The worst APIs are the ones that grew. An endpoint here, a quick fix there, until the result is a maze only its author can navigate, and the author has left. We design APIs before building them: the resources, the verbs, the error shapes and the versioning strategy, agreed and documented up front.

What a Well-Built API Includes

• Predictable resource design that maps to how consumers think
• Authentication done properly: tokens, scopes and rate limits
• Errors that explain themselves, with codes a developer can act on
• Versioning from day one, so improvement never means breakage
• Documentation generated from the code, so it cannot drift out of date

Idempotent, Observable, Boring

Production APIs earn their keep in the unglamorous details: idempotent endpoints that survive retries, request logging that makes support questions answerable in minutes and monitoring that notices problems before your consumers do. We sweat those details because we are usually the ones consuming the API too.