Learn REST principles and understand why REST is the standard for web APIs.
- What is REST?
- REST principles
- API vs web service
- REST constraints
- Stateless communication
- Resource-based design
- REST vs SOAP
- API ecosystem
Master HTTP methods and status codes for proper REST API communication.
- GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
- PATCH and OPTIONS
- Idempotency
- Safe methods
- HTTP status codes
- 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx responses
- Custom status codes
- Error handling
Design clean, intuitive URLs and organize resources effectively.
- Resource identification
- URL structure
- Naming conventions
- Nested resources
- Query parameters
- Path parameters
- Resource relationships
- URL best practices
Work with JSON and other data formats for API communication.
- JSON structure
- Data serialization
- Content-Type headers
- Accept headers
- XML alternatives
- Data validation
- Schema design
- Nested objects
Handle HTTP requests and craft appropriate responses.
- Request parsing
- Request validation
- Response formatting
- Headers management
- CORS handling
- Content negotiation
- Compression
- Response optimization
Secure APIs with proper authentication and authorization mechanisms.
- API keys
- Basic authentication
- Bearer tokens
- JWT tokens
- OAuth 2.0
- API security
- Role-based access
- Rate limiting
Implement robust error handling and input validation.
- Error response format
- Validation strategies
- Input sanitization
- Error codes
- Error messages
- Global error handlers
- Validation libraries
- Error logging
Manage API evolution with proper versioning strategies.
- Versioning strategies
- URL versioning
- Header versioning
- Query parameter versioning
- Backward compatibility
- Deprecation policies
- Migration strategies
- Version documentation
Handle large datasets with pagination, filtering, and sorting.
- Pagination strategies
- Offset-based pagination
- Cursor-based pagination
- Query filtering
- Sorting parameters
- Search functionality
- Response metadata
- Performance optimization
Create comprehensive API documentation using modern tools.
- Documentation importance
- OpenAPI/Swagger
- API specifications
- Interactive documentation
- Code examples
- Postman collections
- Documentation tools
- Maintenance strategies
Implement comprehensive testing strategies for REST APIs.
- Testing strategies
- Unit testing
- Integration testing
- API testing tools
- Postman testing
- Automated testing
- Mock servers
- Performance testing
Optimize API performance and implement monitoring solutions.
- Performance optimization
- Caching strategies
- Response compression
- API monitoring
- Analytics and metrics
- Rate limiting
- Load balancing
- Scaling strategies