This presentation shares the golden nuggets learned while designing, implementing and supporting JSON-based REST APIs, using examples from a clean real-world REST+JSON API built with Java technologies.
Designing a really clean and intuitive REST + JSON API is no small feat. You have to worry about resources, collections of resources, pagination, query parameters, references to other resources, which HTTP Methods to use, HTTP Caching, security, and more! And you have to make sure it lasts and doesn’t break clients as you add features over time. Further, while there are many references on creating REST APIs with XML, there are much fewer references for REST + JSON. This presentation covers:
– JSON-based data formats in a RESTful API
– References to other JSON-based resources (aka ‘linking’).
– Resource collections and pagination
– How to map (and how not to map) HTTP methods to Resource CRUD
– Resource partial updates
– Supporting HTTP Method Overloading for clients that don’t support HTTP PUT and DELETE
– API versioning strategies
– Meaningful Error responses
– Many-to-many resource relationships
– HTTP Caching and Optimistic concurrency control.
– Authentication and Security
Slides of the presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/stormpath/rest-jsonapis