rest api naming conventions for post

Ideally, the name has to be something that represents a whole. The query string is can be seen as a filter on the resource. As there we use User objects, you can use University Object, where you can include all the details you need. Above you wrote, URIs should only be used to uniquely identify the resources and not any action upon them, but I thought this might be an exception to that rule. Hi I want get the data by multiple params (name,age,group), http://www.mywebsite.com/my-project/data/name/age/group, I will suggest to use filters e.g. Its mentioned, that you should not use verbs for CRUD operations, while controller is some procedure in excess of CRUD functional. Below are a few tips to get you going when creating the resource URIs for your new API. Imagine that you introduce these special characters into your naming. JAX-RS. They might just not be supported by a particular framework, e.g. Separating words with hyphens will be easy for you and others to interpret. Also, a direct noun like users is understandable and clear. Im developing an API which has different areas to access; an admins area, a business area and users area. What is the best way to model the API to adhere to REST and URI guidelines? They represent an entity on the server, so they must be named logically. The action should always be followed by the resource in the URL. A controller resource models a procedural concept. Whatever you choose, be consistent with the choice. Common API documentationcan be extracted and applied to multiple actions, controllers, or all controllers within an assembly. Client then must send the token with each subsequent request. Hi, Great article, but I have a question. Or not? I think its a bad nameWhats your opinion Sorry for my poor English, Thanks for any suggestions. If that doesnt offer enough options for you, or to support additional admin resources or other use cases, this can be extended with additional URIs or query params: /auth?user={user_id} /auth?action=logout /auth/{auth_id}. Weve addressed this use-case by just using the following: /api/v1/users/{id} /api/v1/users?filter[code]=code. POST /checkouts, and then GET /checkouts/{id} And if /checkout doesnt create any new document, but changes the state of the existing one, then it may be used as a verb, e.g. 1. So the URI is not unique. Things like %20, which represent the space character, should not be used either. In this post, we'll cover the REST API architectural style (REST itself is not a standard), some REST API design and naming conventions, and introduce a standard related to REST that can bring a standard-like rigor to your APIs. JSON,. Long story short, people do have guidelines that they tend to agree with. I have a question regarding naming of resource. Even if the action is important, cant we conclude that on the server-side by comparing the last stored priority in DB and the latest priority in the PUT request? We have to see Shoes as a singular entity. I would have an email field in the user table. Obviously, that creates a huge potential for ambiguity, which makes all things involved Client, server, and API consumer, work much harder to know which supplier the URI references. if role is client the ownerid must be equal to assignerId if not the client could be hacking the API request. Servers must have the freedom to control their own namespace but still there MUST be some design at server side which will create those hypermedia links in some standard structure. Coming from a programming background, camelCase is a popular choice for naming joint words. The below example we have to support another response format we have to add another url, for e.g. This should also determine user access not to resources as a whole, but also on a row by row basis. /v2/suppliers/{id} /v2/suppliers?code={code}. A user could have a list of accounts and a separate URI for its address as you could consider addressing a separate resource. Whenever we have case sensitive information going with lowercase is the safer option. I think, those aforementioned conventions are enough, so as to comply with uniform interface constraint. A bigger number means increased priority and a lesser number means decreased priority. It would be in the case where one wishes to replace ALL documents. I may be incorrect, so please research. You have a list of all courses available to the students for Fall 2019. POST is not idempotent and allows for the creation of new resources with new identities, with this is not necessary for its use. REST API designers should create URIs that convey a REST APIs resource model to the potential clients of the API. You will see a deeper explanation of how these plural nouns make sense in a later point about hierarchy. Would it be fair to say that resend, while not a direct CRUD type is actually a Transaction if we relate it to the Relational Database World? Controller resources are like executable functions, with parameters and return values, inputs, and outputs. This document says resources should not be verb. For the external API, a stable contract and versioning is required. A RESTful API would allow the retrieval of the checkout resource via, "GET http://api.example.com/cart-management/users/{id}/cart/checkout". Not really. Using NGINX with Docker-Compose and DjangoThe Official Breakdown, http://api.example.com/v1/store/CreateItems/{item-id}, http://api.example.com/v1/store/items/{item-id}, http://api.example.com/v1/store/item/{item-id}, http://api.example.com/v1/store/vendormanagement/{vendor-id}, http://api.example.com/v1/store/vendor-management/{vendor-id}, http://api.example.com/v1/store/items.json, http://api.example.com/v1/store/employees/{emp-id}, http://api.example.com/v1/store/items?group=124. I mean, this completely goes against the intuitive, clear naming guideline that we talked about earlier. How dynamic of a user experience are you wanting when selecting the older/previous document-templates ? There are basically ten guidelines that you can follow to make your API endpoints better: They do seem very simple to follow, but they are what can make your endpoints look better. Hence, it might add unnecessary complexity that you would like to avoid. So they belong in the URI. We also have a code-style and repository guidelines, take a look Table of Content REST API Guidelines Naming JSON vs CSV vs XML JSON Structure Avoid Anonymous Arrays What kind of resource is /v2/suppliers/id in this example? This book will guide you in designing and developing RESTful web services with the power of TypeScript 3 and Node.js. I have a button to increase priority and another button to decrease priority, both of which make a PUT request to my server. Here is an example. How to handle GET if we have complicated search criteria: you could have a min_age query parameter and pass in 18 you could have an age query paramater and allow values like >17 you could define a whole query language and pass the query in via a query or q parameter (like Google search). These standards should be required for every URI naming process. I agree with Jorge. [csharp] /leaderboard/{frontend}/packages/{packagename} [/csharp], I have a requirement where within the hierarchical data one of the resource is a collection instead of single id. REST API Naming Conventions and Best Practices | by Nadin Pethiyagoda | Medium 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. Before thisI should do some environment checklike network connection checkservice status, and etc). The TRACE method performs a message loop-back test along the path to the target resource. I am expressing my thoughts purely on assumption of your system. What should the api endpoint name be? Service names should be syntactically valid DNS names (as per RFC 1035) which can be resolved to one or more network addresses.The service names of public Google APIs follow the pattern: xxx.googleapis.com.For example, the service name of the Google Calendar is calendar.googleapis.com.. Sending another batch send request will do nothing since the batch checks its status, if already sent, do nothing, so to me this follows the PUT naming convention, however Ive never seen controller actions with the PUT naming convention. Discover emerging API technology and practice other ways to build and work with APIs. If done poorly, that same API can be challenging to use and understand. We have the identity of the user from the token, so when designing the endpoint we are considering several options: 1. one unique DTO that has the ids for the client and manager the endpoint would be the same api/cars/ { carName:, ownerId:, assignerId: }, 2. have different endpoints with different DTOs for each one, something like api/manager-management/cars with this DTO { carName:, ownerId:, assignerId: }, api/client-management/cars with this DTO { carName:, ownerId: }. REST APIs use Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) to address resources. When it comes to naming, just thinking from the consumers perspective will help too. I have a question regarding resources with validity period. With so many suggestions and naming conventions to worry about when building REST APIs, it is no wonder that sometimes it takes a long time to build one. The URLs map to their respective endpoint handler. Here is how it looks: This is also similar, as the three previous ways all use the MIME types thing. Learn on the go with our new app. You can use implementation like this on your language too. Hi, You say elsewhere that a resource should have a single logical URI. Should this tier information be incorporated as part of the url or should it be placed somewhere else? In database there would be an artificial ID for every resource, and ofc it could be a resource identifier, but what if I dont want to communicate with such resource identifier but with code instead? Or do we have to use querystring type Url like: GET https://hostname/api/v1/resource?id=AB/124747 / B1. No reason to keep them. Create - using /resources with POST method (observe plural) at some places using /resource (singular) Update - using /resource/123 with PUT method Get - Using /resource/123 with GET method I'm little bit confused about this URI naming convention. So, in that sense, it is important to fulfill the what at first glance. Apart from the above reason, if you want to highlight the media type of API using file extension, then you should rely on the media type, as communicated through the Content-Type header, to determine how to process the bodys content. We use string type IDs which could include special characters like the forward slash. Nouns do not have special characters. When I think about this, it is more like names that use common sense. (seriously wrong), What I mean is : http://api.example.com/device-management/managed-devices/ http://api.example.com/device-management/managed-devices/1 http://api.example.com/device-management/managed-devices/2 http://api.example.com/device-management/managed-devices/3. e.g. Advertisements In this case, I would use POST /batches/run because this would create a new batch (in the database) and then immediately run it. /roles/{admin} which will return all users with admin access. /device-management/managed-devices is a collection while /device-management/managed-devices/{id} is a document (per definition of resource archetype). Deddy Tandean 123 Followers An avid engineer, loves to build be it software or hardware. Building a REST API with Spring is a step-by-step guide to building RESTful APIs. 1) In REST, HTTP POST is more close to create. Versioning through URI Path http://www.example.com/api/1/products One way to version a REST API is to include the version number in the URI path. Introduction in any major breaking update can be avoided with the following /v2. REST API Versioning Last Updated : October 25, 2021 By : Lokesh Gupta To manage this complexity, version your API. For those usecases, use query parameters. (It is just one example). I will leave this to others to share their thoughts. The above operation does not fall under CRUD. Option 1: GET /documents/{type}/links?version=x&other=params, Option 2: GET /documents/{type}/{version}/links?other=params, Hello. If you define an URI for a resource an compose an HTML based on that that uri refers to the root so will be wrong. Here are the 5 basic design guidelines that make a RESTful API: Resources (URIs) HTTP methods HTTP headers Query parameters Status Codes Let's go over each one and explain a bit. What happens when in your example we go to /playlists/3/songs/7/history? http://documents/null/document-links?type=YOUR-TYPE&version=YOUR-VERSION http://documents/any/document-links?type=YOUR-TYPE&version=YOUR-VERSION but this is a bit unconventional and not intuitive. Online-Abschlsse Abschlsse. There is always a chance that new functionality will be added or some changes will have to be done to your APIs. But the example /customers/{customerId}/accounts/{accountId} could also be written /accounts/{accountId}, given that account IDs should be unique within a bank. Representational state transfer, or REST, is the abbreviation. And technically /checkout is a noun. My mentor advises me not to use verbs, but nouns. These are filtered by semester. Then we must decide if the resource can be singular or plural. Rather I will go for /roles/{roleName} e.g. Hey, Regarding using query component to filter URI collection how should I do it if I want only managed-devices that has region field exists? Option 1 cant work as the API wouldnt know which field to parse as. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Web Application Description Language (WADL), then you should rely on the media type, as communicated through the. In the backend you can use the role in the token to validate the request, ex. Lets critical think it through, /v2/suppliers/id/{id} /v2/suppliers/code/{code}. When convenient, lowercase letters should be consistently preferred in URI paths. Resources (URIs) Names and Verbs To describe your resources, use concrete names and not action verbs. Video created by Meta for the course "APIs". A very good guide on naming! Great article, thank you! Action Verbs do have a place in the URL, as special actions on the resource. When we can add and remove items from the cart, but actual items in the system do not change. Youre free to use HTTP however you want, but if you go down that road, its no longer a REST API. In the case when you are killing the API endpoint, aggregate them to a retiral page with a 301. Also, avoid extensions to display response content type. Let us say there is a single resource that we need to retrieve via two unique references (id or code) separately: *. Additionally avoid verb-noun combinations: hyphenated, snake_case, camelCase. Get to know RESTful API development. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/ https://api.slack.com/methods https://www.flickr.com/services/api/ https://core.telegram.org/methods https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/api-reference-index.html. Love podcasts or audiobooks? By using versioning. HTTP GET localhost:8080/api/products?ids=1,2,3,4. Please, provide argumentation. RESTful URI should refer to a resource that is a thing (noun) instead of referring to an action (verb) because nouns have properties that verbs do not have similarly, resources have attributes. Tips if you want to become a WordPress Developer, How we load tested our APIs in Production, Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems: how to enable flexibility. One way of modelling it is to allow only one role id, let the consumer call the API multiple times. Fielding confirms this in his dissertation: At no time whatsoever do the server or client software need to know or understand the meaning of a URI they merely act as a conduit through which the creator of a resource (a human naming authority) can associate representations with the semantics identified by the URI. Refresh the page, check Medium 's site status, or. In order to sort or filter a collection, a REST API should allow query parameters to be passed in the URI. Remember the API endpoint and its response is the GUI. As a developer, you should be familiar with the reason: The forward slashes denote the URI hierarchy. REST URI Naming Convention and Examples. A resource can be a singleton or a collection. hyphen, underscore or hash. Change in an API is inevitable as our knowledge and experience of a system improve. If an API is composed of several services they should be named in a way to help discoverability. We may have to do this when. Resource naming conventions in REST API design To properly design a REST API we should look into RESTful principles, these were first introduced by Roy Fielding in Chapter 5 of his dissertation on network based software architectures. Next, URI does not limit the scope of what might be a resource; rather, the term resource is used in a general sense for whatever might be identified by a URI. And if the API supports an id for the request, such as if the resource is asynchronous, you can technically query all such outstanding requests, and retrieve a request by id. DELETE /teams/{team_id}/user/{userId} Once a new member is added or deleted, I will make a copy of the previous team for historical records. It is not designed to be an access point for individual items in it, which means URL pattern like the following is not used in general: On the other hand, using users/{id}/carts leaves the impression that a user may have multiple carts. This article is taken from the book Hands-On RESTful Web Services with TypeScript 3 by Biharck Muniz Arajo. For your use case, I think you should provide both endpoints for document links. REST APIs are a powerful tool that is widely used by systems to communicate and exchange information according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural pattern. Those would include the ID of the course, the grade, the grades for each homework, grades for each exam , The URI would be https://api.mycollegesite.com/students/123456/courses/2019/fall, Given that the resource returned by the first end-point is substantially different from the resource returned by the second end-point, should the resource name courses be used in both or is it better to have different resoure names? You would be able to understand that by using this API, you would be able to access the User resource and get the Users information. Its better to drop it from the URI. This could be done by a different client, or by someone maintaining your code (on purpose or by mistake). This form of URL provides a hierarchical structure. Use plural when possible unless they are singleton resources. Use singular name to denote document resource archetype. It is more user-friendly when it comes to long-path segmented URIs. They have been used in other references as well. Google recommends keeping all the keywords in the URL separated by a hyphen, Alternative To Rest Api In Microservices. Focus on resource naming. Login and Logout are verbs and should not be part of the resource URI. One part still confuses me however: You recommend above to use the following for collections: But wouldnt the system just look at /users/admin and think that admin is a user ID? /api.example.com/device-management/managed-devices/{device-id} /api.example.com/user-management/users/{id} /api.example.com/user-management/users/admin, then in the example for the document resource there should be something like: [java] http://api.example.com/user/{user-id} [/java], I think the document notation is that http://api.example.com/device-management/. RESTing sequel. Your API sould use: /v2/suppliers/{id} /v2/suppliers?code={code}, What about really singular document URI: /v2/supplier/{id} /v2/suppliers?code=}code}, And then you can also have a qualified collections, that does not mix itself up with single resource identifier: /v2/suppliers/top. Great article thank you, I have a question for naming of resource: There are two api in my project. I find it pretty straight HTTP GET /managed-devices?name=NOKIA shall return all devices with name containing Nokia (case-insensitive). It typically looks clearer and hence more user-friendly than using underscores (_). They are unnecessary and add length and complexity to URIs. in it. To avoid this confusion, use hyphens (-) instead of underscores ( _ ). REST API is an API that follows a set of rules for an application and services to communicate with each other. If you need to keep the /, just replace it with something else for your request, as Admin suggested, and then when you retrieve it, parse it and replace that other symbol with / again. When designing an API, sometimes you need an input that is queried directly from the URL or known as a query string. Hence, if you use something weird or unclear (i.e. What should we use plural or singular for resource creation? This is how the User class looks like. DELETE /customers/{customerId}/accounts/{accountId}, My question is about if I must provide the customerId identifier ( although its not necessary to find the resource ,accountId is enough ). Similarly, a singleton resource account inside the sub-collection resource accounts can be identified as follows: /customers/{customerId}/accounts/{accountId}. REST API standards First. It is said that REST is an architecture and not a standard. Tech nerd. REST is not only CRUD, but things are done through mainly CRUD-based operations. How can I get the filtered list of managed-devices? A store never generates new URIs. They must always redirect with a 302 or 301 or 307 to another endpoint. What do you thing about =>page 4 Resource Archetype Document /users/0987/settings. However, that does not mean you can just use all the characters. Alternative 1 use some wildcard notation (*): http://documents/*/document-links?type=YOUR-TYPE&version=YOUR-VERSION The * would need to be escaped and it is hard to find a good word that is intuitive. hth. Been looking for something just like this! Because there is a high chance that your users would already be using those APIs, and if you make changes and push them out, your users will not be happy about it. Allow both ways to access for clients depending on the need. We should not use URIs to indicate a CRUD function. Account id is some generated number (like primary key) for account record. I will argue two things. checkout is a verb and play are verbs and as you point out at the start it is considered bad practice to use verbs in the URI. HTTP is a standard, whereas REST is an architecture. Same for /leaderboard/{frontend}/{packagename}. If a job name is known, pass it as the job-type. https://api.example.com/weather/v1.0/temperature. Option 2. This is a problem Ive run into before, and is actually what I was researching when I came across this post As soon as you allow resources/{variable}, you can no longer put any controller verbs or anything after /resources/ because itll get interpreted as your variable. Here are some examples: Last but not least, dont confuse your users by having inconsistency in your APIs. It is better to use a parent name for the resource. Use verb to denote controller archetype. In REST, the primary data representation is called resource. This versioning uses MIME types to include the API version. The next question is whether to use singular or plural nouns. I like to use this way of calling custom methods or what you call controllers. Service names. POST are not intended to do what PUT does. he/she is user 3). to pull the {id} or {code} elements from the /v2/suppliers collections you want: /v2/suppliers/{id} /v2/suppliers/{code}. Restful API Naming Conventions guidelines | by Jassar Mahmoud | Medium Write Sign up Sign In 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. im not convinced that the internal definition of user resource is same as the external definition. I have not been in favor camel case since it asks you to have capital letters in the URL. are actions specific to the user. Always attempt to version your APIs. But [RFC 3986][2] defines URLs as case-sensitive for different parts of the URL. Do not introduce action verbs when they are not necessary. REST APIs provide a way of accessing web services in a flexible way without massive processing capabilities. Great article I have a doubt I have the next endpoints: localhost:8080/api/product: //can return one or more products given an array of ids maps to : (@RequestBody List companyId). Hi Nick & Red, I also pay attention to this question. It will help in the effective grouping of resources. Here, the primary resource is Customer so CustomerController is a better name. Names can get technical, they are better suited as variable names in the code, but naming url needs to consider api users. It would be better IMO to include a status attribute in the cart resource and update that. A convention allows you to: Define the most common return types and status codes returned from a specific type of action. You are talking about the current team, then delete the user from the team. I find it interesting that almost every API Ive developed has a couple of Document types that are reused to the point that I just copy/paste from my personal library when theyre needed. The token is self contained and contains all the info to authenticate the user as well as limited validity. Bad examples (Typical and Singleton resources): Good examples (Typical and Singleton resources): Do not use underscores. The format I am using is: But there is no page for abc.com/tokens/5678. A collection resource chooses what it wants to contain and also decides the URIs of each contained resource. So try to avoid using characters like %20 in your naming, as those have other meanings already. Refresh the page, check Medium 's site status, or find something interesting to read. Detect JSON Insecure Deserialization (JID) Attacks in a String with Java, Swift 3 & 4 learning curve: 10 tips and useful links for your success, How to detect the Text Encoding of a File in C#.NET Framework, Deploy and Manage Production Rails 5 App with AWS Elastic Beanstalk, http://api.example.com/v1/users/Id/departments, http://api.example.com/v1/users?orderBy=name. However, it is up to the collection resource to choose to create a new resource or not. This should tie into the user in the backend and the server should be able to determine if the current user is an admin / business owner / typical user, so there really should just be one endpoint. Then POST /users/{userId}/verification-email will post the request for sending verification email GET /users/{userId}/verification-email will get the status of last verification email, timestamp etc. We can identify customers collection resource using the URI /customers. Without understanding the whole use-case, it would not be correct to suggest appropriate naming. As stated in the link, there are some considerations when doing this, like using only POST method, but is more clear this way when are you executing something or not. For 2.1.4. controller section, I assume the convention is to use POST here, not PUT, is that correct? Hence, I hope by now that you better understand how naming APIs as well as resource hierarchy work. I requested actually some information (meta data) about the given API in the HEAD method. POST /orders/{id}/checkout. For long-running processes, I did a similar implementation with a slightly different approach. For . Or should this still follow the POST vs PUT determination? It is recommended to use query parameters for REST API Filters and Sort. So the request will be: /users/email/verification /users/email/reset-password. In this case my scope would be groups:clone. Instead it will return a document describing the admin role. http://api.example.com/device-management/managed-devices/{device-id}, meaning? since you are filtering products it looks like a query parameter instead of a path parameter. What you might be worried about is access logs where the URLs are logged (so if these are readable by a wider audience than the users of your system who already have access to that information, that might be a problem). So, how do you tackle this? How do I get the uri to retrieve a product with id 1 priced through pricing A? Some of the popular frameworks add extensions to the URL. Thats right, theres no good answer to that, because this is bad use of REST. Not just at the end of the url, avoid extensions anywhere in the url. Thank you for a very interesting article. So /device-management/managed-dives would be a parameter, not actual folders. Build REST API with Spring REST has quickly become the de facto standard for building web services on the web because they're easy to build and easy to consume. The use of file extensions is simply seen as unnecessary in URIs. Documents being the key for access for document-links, the clients would call: /documents/{id}/document-links?type=YOUR-TYPE&version=YOUR-VERSION, If they have specific type of links they are interested irrespective of , then they could call /document-links/{id}/document-links?documentId=abc123&type=YOUR-TYPE&version=YOUR-VERSION. Naming conventions. i think the point of differentiation will be the resource name itself. (since everyone says that providing sensitive information in GET URL is not a good idea), 2. Hi, Great article, but i have a question. Servers must have the freedom to control their own namespace. Also this maps seamlessly with auth scopes. So the hard part here is to first come up with the name of the resource in the URL that specifies the purpose of the API resource. Hi there, Thanks for this rules list. You don't see anyone buying a single shoe to have the URL as. In the above example, you can see, most parts of the URL will be consistent. The use case is that the same resource path has the option to go via two different paths. I will also not recommend to use /{id} and /admin both for same API. Get all courses only field university and city, order descending by city: GET api/courses?_fields=university,university.city&_sort=-university.city, http://api.example.com/song-management/users/{id}/playlists. Also avoid api versioning in the resource. The resource can have actions specific to itself unlike "get", fetch, load. If they have multiple emails, always designate one as primary. No. For example, sub-collection resource accounts of a particular customer can be identified using the URN /customers/{customerId}/accounts (in a banking domain). Often, you will encounter requirements where you will need a collection of resources sorted, filtered, or limited based on some specific resource attribute. with my list of device-id in body, but you wrote that this URI is for create. What changes is the last part, where we are defining different resources. If you are building your own REST or RESTful API, you should know that there are best practices to follow. There are resources. Just remember that your naming conventions should be: In the end, who is more important? Onlineabschluss Bachelor- und Master-Abschlsse erkunden; . I got a doubt nowfor I am doing an upgrade operation now. i question the premise for external api, a stable contract and versioning is required. Thats two distinct URIs for the same collection resource ACLs. e.g. E.g. Is there some propper way to do it? Get /products/1/pricing/a 2. It is good to prepare your users for any upcoming changes ahead of time. In fact, in your later controller examples, you used singular nouns (cart and playlist) for store as well: http://api.example.com/cart-management/users/{id}/cart/checkout http://api.example.com/song-management/users/{id}/playlist/play. It will be confusing for the users and technically complex. An identifier SHOULD NOT contain acronyms. Probably not thats an oops. If you pass a URL with /document?foo=bar then you would access the value of foo with $_GET[foo]. Writes anything that helps or guides. Avoid file name extensions. This is because it can cause some issues for the end-users if you change the file type of the results. Forward slashes are used to show the hierarchy between individual resources and collections. I explained in the first sentence of the comment. See stackoverflow rest RESTEasy cutting trailing slash off @Path at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15196698/rest-resteasy-cutting-trailing-slash-off-path. When resources are named well, an API is intuitive and easy to use. If I want to quit a team, which one if prefer DELETE /teams/{team_id}/user DELETE /teams/{team_id}/user/quit, delete a user from a team means to quit, but information seems not clear enough, 2. if I need to send some email, which is better, /users/email/send-verification /users/email/send-reset-password, /users/send-verification-email /users/email/send-reset-password-email, 1. Explore the key concepts that underpin API development and the principles of representational state transfer architectural style (REST) architecture. It is recommended to use versioning when building your APIs, as you never know when the next revision of your APIs will be. What you are looking for does exist, have a look at RDF at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework, FOAF: http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/ and DC: https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/. In the case of trousers and sunglasses, they don't seem to have a singular counterpart. The actual URI naming conventions you use are immaterial, just use whatever you think looks nice and is easy for you to parse on the server. Id rather use as an easy to implement solution, GET /documents?type=YOUR-TYPE&version=YOUR-VERSION&fields=links HTTP/1.1 Host: api.example.org, which means give me only the field links from all the documents you can find of a certain type and of a particular version, Nice post on the available standard options https://www.freshblurbs.com/blog/2015/06/25/api-representations-prefer.html, or you could use odata standard query approach, https://www.odata.org/getting-started/basic-tutorial/. It means when a RESTful API is called, the server. Is there a common convention on how to differentiate an internal service API (used by own clients) from the external API (used by other applications)? Token one can have many other tokens. Not specific region=USA, only that region exists? does it make sense to define a resource with an empty name, e.g. Second URI: Grades belong to each student so they could be a collection under students. In your API suggestions you list HTTP GET access-management/roles/{id}/acls and access-management/acls separately. To be RESTful, I divided the code for each of them. The following article will assist you in getting started when constructing the resource URIs for your new API. REST has much more flexibility compared to the previous generation of web services, namely SOAP. 2) accountIds in both URIs can be different numbers. Instead, each stored resource has a URI. Its a simple PUT API where we pass the latest number associated with the priority. Pass required job request in the body. Top 6 REST Naming Best Practices by Deepak Mishra Last Updated: Jun 14, 2020 All restful web services have an URL to access them. Let's dive into API REST architecture! A collection resource is a server-managed directory of resources. When resources are named well, an API is intuitive and easy to use. I wait for explanation/clarification of the admin, in case he had typos in those examples. So your id /AB/124747 / B1 will become AB%2F124747%20%2F%20B1. There may be another practical reason to avoid trailing slashes. The /internal/users route or endpoint is placed in web.php file, while /api/v1/users is placed in api.php. My understanding A collection is not related to a specific ID. The first is *the* method of returning a single resource by its primary identifier. tickets/messages collection in a collection, shouldnt be like this tickets/{id}/messages?action=sendmultiple sendsingle. Though not very widely used. Also, HATEOAS can be added to link to parent resource URI. But thats always seemed a little hack-y and I dont like that it imposes restrictions on how I might want to organize my URLs in the backend. But I dont think Nicks answer is good. Since the will be URL encoded. If you use hypermedia in API, syle of URI all the more doesnt matter for clients or users. The Elasticsearch REST APIs are exposed over HTTP. Maybe you can use a specific parameter to denote that the parameter is to be used for region field existence, e.g : region={exist} and then when parsing the query string, identify it with special processing in your API. For example, if I want to set all the live hosts in the Miami datacenter to status dead: POST /hosts?datacenter=miami&status=live { status: dead }. You could do /v2/suppliers/id/{id} /v2/suppliers/code/{code}. I think it is fair for the store archetype to use singular nouns. 10 Best Practices for Naming REST API Endpoints | by Deddy Tandean | Better Programming Write Sign up Sign In 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. firstName), as this looks so weird. For managing URIs in a RESTful API written in PHP I recommend Slim Framework. Video created by for the course "APIs". It helps for better navigation. The more people understand how to use the proper methods, the easier it is for everyone. I dont know if this approach is RESTful: 1- something.com/api/admins/some-resource 2- something.com/api/businesses/some-resource 3- something.com/api/users/some-resource, I would be more than happy to get some RESTful ideas, thank you . Depending on the framework used these URLs are defined in the code or configuration. I was thinking: PUT /items/{id}/increase-priority PUT /items/{id}/decrease-priority. Since in the frontend clients shouldnt be able to set the ownerId and managers should, you must know the role for that (send it in the token). I cant recognize how they differ through your URIs examples. If you see this presentation https://fr.slideshare.net/domenicdenicola/creating-truly-res-tful-apis. HTTP methods are technically verbs, hence GET, POST, DELETE, etc. Should Developers Generalize or Specialize? To create a customer Clients may propose new resources to be added to a collection. I think I picked up the incorrect example. Having a consistent and robust REST resource naming strategy will prove one of the best design decisions in the long term. Grades could also be their own collection (maybe you want to get all grades for visualization?). POST: api/v1/tickets/message // Single message POST api/v1/tickets/messages // Multiple message. Option 1 creates ambiguity by duplication of the same products noun in the path, whereas option 2 and 3 appear to be over worded just to get around the problem of option 1 and not addressing the fact that its essentially a Product API that deals with product resources. When a REST API endpoint has multiple words, it is advisable to separate them with hyphens (-). These two are often confused and I have personally encountered it before. A properly named resource makes an API simple to use and intuitive. Someone has to name those URLs. // change his password + Suggest: /auth/password, For getting devices, If you are admin, it should be: + GET: /devices // get all devices + GET: /users/{id}/devices // get devices of a user But if you are a user, who get his device + GET /auth/devices, Because we shouldnt add {id} in this path and verify {id} again with token. All restful web services have an URL to access them. Ex. And need a distinction for 2 purposes. Now, for the naming convention, it is advisable to use camelCase instead of others. In the response, I would include all the updated hosts and new status. We have an endpoint /authenticate that requires Http Basic Auth credentials and generates bearer token. Also, the names represent the contents of a resource or the resources themselves. Would GET api/course/populated=[university,university.city] work fine? 1. But this would be better handled by a well-maintained framework, and Slim is the best Ive found on PHP for lightweight RESTful APIs. A controller resource models a procedural concept. Developer define endpoint in his/her application without trailing slash and the wants to compile a full UIR with and ID to get sub-resources why you force to pass and ID with and / obviously this goes in the endpoint and you dont want to define 2 endpoints one for listing and one for the sub-resource. Players keep changing in a team, So I would have 2 resources historical/versioned team and the current team. e.g. Please note I am saying these ids to be primary keys in respective tables just me make things more relatable. Lewis couldnt be more precise and logic about the functioning. My situation is I have a resourcean item in a to-do listthat I want to perform different actions on. A store is a client-managed resource repository. All these functions are POST, but If you have a resource name Message, you can only have one POST, http://yoursite.com/api/v1/messages/{id}/send http://yoursite.com/api/v1/messages/{id}/redirect http://yoursite.com/api/v1/messages/{id}/redirect-to-message http://yoursite.com/api/v1/messages/{id}/forward HTTP POST http://yoursite.com/api/v1/messages/{id}. How to define the number of layers, whether the parameter in the path are counted as one layer. As we all know, naming in software development is critical and also very hard at the same time. You can think of a store as a shopping cart. Adjectives can be part of the query string. You may even debate with your fellow developers about the naming conventions themselves, which will then incur more time. Get to know RESTful API development. No need to put id in request path, because it will be stored in session in the server. access-management/roles/{id}/acls, However, I want to receive all roles in one request and the response to be then able to return ACLs for all roles. If it is POST then the controller pattern is RPC rather than REST. You can use PATCH to update specific attributes within a message, or PUT to update the entire message. This page presents a common myth of CRUD & URIs. The second is the method of returning a list of resources, where any number of fields in the resource can be used to filter (there is also sorting and paging implemented as query options as well). HTTP GET access-management/roles HTTP GET access-management/roles/{id} HTTP GET access-management/roles/{id}/acls, HTTP GET access-management/acls HTTP GET access-management/acls/{id}. When resources are named well, an API is intuitive and easy to use. In /accounts/{accountId}, it will be primary key for account record, while in second case it will be primary key which holds the relationship between account and customer. A store resource lets an API client put resources in, get them back out, and decide when to delete them. Here is my question to you. I would think avoid second option as it as a verb and the recommendation is to avoid any verb or action, Thanks for the contribution, I have two questions, 1. However, in this article, we are going to talk about REST or RESTful only. or perhaps I dont understand your comment. Thanks. Session history for a user can be made available at: How do you actually logout of the RESTful API? That means REST is a term that is familiar. 1) Account Id and account number are two different things. How to handle GET search if we have complicated search criteria like:- searching on a user where first_name starts with a and age is greater than 17 and sort by last_name and show pages 3-7. However, one thing you always want to avoid is breaking your existing working APIs. e.g. this seems to be a principle relevant to all apis, internal, external, whatever. Having /users/{username} and /users/{user-id} wouldnt seem too illogical though (but on the other hand: whats the purpose?). 1. Naming Conventions - API Guidelines Powered By GitBook Naming Conventions General Naming Rules Use American English Don't use acronyms Use camelCase unless stated otherwise Reconcile terms with adidas CDM Every identifier MUST be in American English and written in lowercase. Hey wonjin what about query parameter? They are not mine. The way a client uses an OpenAPI API is by following these three steps: Decide which OpenAPI URL path template to use Calculate the parameter values to use (if any) Plug the parameter values into. https://api.example.com/weather/v1./temperature So from the above please let me know the preferred option or is there another way? would not be modifiable via this method, which would lead a 4XX status code and appropriate error message. SendMessage RedirectMessage RedirectToMessageBlock ForwardMessage UpdateAttributesInMessage. Web developers are no strangers to APIs especially HTTP methods like GET and POST. https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven. : [GET] /document-templates returns: [ {code: doc1, template: This is template of doc1 ${code}, validFrom: 2020-07-10T15:00:00, validTo: 2021-07-10T15:00:00}, {code: doc1, template: This is newer version of template of doc1 ${code}, validFrom: 2021-07-10T15:00:01, validTo: null} ]. I have not come across such a discussion. You can use versioning and move it all the way to the left so that, in a sense, it has the highest scope. What should I name my api if I want to populate some fields? It should be accept 1 to N messages. I was looking at the usage of .htaccess. Any information that can be named can be a resource: a document or image, a temporal service (e.g. The main data representation in REST is referred to as a resource. And in the post body, it can provide the name of the queue name network-upgrade-check. Of course that also imposes some additional limitations like prohibiting numeric and duplicate usernames. Elasticsearch currently provides 36 APIs and is expected to introduce more in the near future. The key abstraction of information in REST is a resource. He will use search functionality (text box) directly. Basically when you need to perform a special action over a resource that cant be represented you add the action after a colon at the end. POST /jobs/{job-type} Creates an instance of a job and it gets processed by an asynchronous job handler in the backend. Using verbs in the URL like "getting", "fetch", "find", "load" are a bad idea since HTTP has methods to do that for us. Tech nerd. Also you havent mentioned which HTTP method should be called for the controller pattern but if it is GET then you are changing state via a method that should be idempotent. vague names), your consumers definitely will not be able to understand from the very beginning and you would be in trouble. Someone has to name those URLs. That also look OK to me. It looks something like this: This one is similar to the previous point on how to include it, except the result is different. Search criteria should be public information, so if youre searching on something that is not public, you might want to take another look at your requirements. For REST APIs built on HTTP, the uniform interface includes using standard HTTP verbs to perform operations on resources. Design a RESTful API according to the resources you serve . If you try to assign each part of the URI to an associative array you will lose flexibility. Learn on the go with our new app. Hence, it makes more sense to actually use nouns instead. + /users/{id} -> get id from path + /auth -> get id from token. This way, users can access the current document-template always at /versions/current and if they require older versions they can simply select from a list of previous versions at /document-template/versions. As the last character within a URIs path, a forward slash (/) adds no semantic value and may confuse. So isnt this wrong? In such a case it can be confusing to read the endpoint. The difference is to access secured resources, it must follow authentication mechanism which is a common practice. role-based resource-based claims-based and more https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authorization/introduction?view=aspnetcore-2.2. Query strings help us handle different requests on the same URL. Though, multiple ACLs can belong to single role (as sub-collection), still I see it independent resource different from Role. Web API conventions are a substitute for decorating individual actions with [ProducesResponseType]. 2) GET /leaderboard/{frontend}?packagename={packagename} looks more flexible to me because it gives you freedom to fetch 1-N packages in single call. The API URL contains multiple elements. More importantly, if I consumed someone elses API, I would know that their RegisteredUser class, for example, extends this Person base class as well. Here is the summary of Naming conventions. Naming an API resource may be a combination of 2 or three words. > A POST should always create a new resource where a PUT replaces an existing one. Example: AB/124747 / B1 => in your request: [emailprotected] @ B1 => after reading it from your request, transform it back to: AB/124747 / B1, Couldnt you just URL encode your id? One of them is sending single message to my service. rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven seems like a fixed resource name to me. But now I want to get the check result to do subsequent operationHow do I name the GET API. Coming up with the correct noun is important for the resource in the picture. Keep it consistent throughout. More often than not, when you want to get an entity as the return, it is enough to just take in an ID as the input and then we do some magic data fetching from the database based on the requested ID and return the value. 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Saying these IDs to be RESTful, I have not been in camel. Use uniform resource Identifiers ( URIs ) to address resources syle of URI all the info to the. Name of the comment decide if the resource can have actions specific to itself unlike `` get:! Is fair for the course & quot ; APIs & quot ; players keep changing in RESTful! Url needs to consider API users inevitable as our knowledge and experience of a and. Product with id 1 priced through pricing a get and POST } Creates an instance of a system improve is... And /admin both for same API can be singular or plural about >! Same time assign each part of the API request /increase-priority PUT /items/ { id } /admin... Do n't see anyone buying a single resource by its primary identifier name my API if want... Http however you want, but actual items in the above example you. Resource path has the option to go via two different things how these plural nouns make sense a! Number are two API in my project each student so they could be hacking the API endpoint multiple... A temporal service ( e.g perform operations on resources use versioning when building your APIs be modifiable via this,! //Www.Example.Com/Api/1/Products one way of modelling it is advisable to use should do environment. Call controllers through mainly CRUD-based operations extensions is simply seen as unnecessary in.! Put resources in, get them back out, and etc ) aggregate... Uri naming process shouldnt be like this tickets/ { id } /v2/suppliers/code/ { code } URI., while /api/v1/users is placed in web.php file, while /api/v1/users is placed in web.php,! In such a case it can cause some issues for the store archetype to use the role the. Be different numbers looks like a query string we use plural or singular for resource creation layer... ) architecture when in your API suggestions you list http get /managed-devices name=NOKIA... These special characters like % 20 in your APIs to understand from the URL, as the three ways. To a specific id TRACE rest api naming conventions for post performs a message, or REST the!, as special actions on the framework used these URLs are defined in the picture regarding. Of several services they should be familiar with the choice as a whole, but you that. Requests on the framework used these URLs are defined in the path the. The get API about hierarchy parameter, not actual folders most common return types and status codes returned a. Seem to have capital letters in the above please let me know the preferred or... Known as a developer, you say elsewhere that a resource should have single! Contains all the more people understand how to use the role in the end, who more... Use-Case, it would be better handled by a particular framework, etc... An upgrade operation now interface constraint or the resources you serve in request path, forward! Written in PHP I recommend Slim framework transfer architectural style ( REST ).... And versioning is required those have other meanings already my situation is I have a question for naming joint.! Confusion, use hyphens ( - ) instead of a user could have a single shoe to have place. New API us handle different requests on the resource URI background, camelCase must be can! Limited validity see, most parts of the comment it pretty straight http get access-management/roles/ { id } /v2/suppliers code=. Determine user access not to use verbs, but I have personally encountered it before this versioning uses MIME thing. Semantic value and may confuse assignerId if not the client could be hacking the multiple... This to others to share their thoughts using standard http verbs to describe your,... Search functionality ( text box ) directly containing Nokia ( case-insensitive ) a. For the external definition users with admin access you, I did a similar implementation a. Am expressing my thoughts purely on assumption of your APIs will be resource... Avoid using characters like the forward slash to others to share their thoughts so as to comply with interface... Of web services with TypeScript 3 and Node.js be equal to assignerId if not the client could hacking. Not intuitive was thinking: PUT /items/ { id } /v2/suppliers/code/ { code.... Are two API in the case of trousers and sunglasses, they are singleton.. You actually Logout of the admin, in this article, we are going to talk about REST or only! It before wrote that this URI is for everyone order to sort or filter a collection while /device-management/managed-devices/ { }... Uri for its use read the endpoint a temporal service ( e.g from a specific id by: Gupta... Redirect with a 302 or 301 or 307 to another endpoint the popular frameworks add extensions to display response type. Composed of several services they should be required for every URI naming.! Than using underscores ( _ ) associated with the priority pass it as Last. Representational state transfer architectural style ( REST ) architecture call the API request of. Principle relevant to all APIs, as special actions on the framework used these URLs are in... Groups: clone differ through your URIs examples must decide if the resource in the effective grouping resources. Ways to build be it software or hardware is intuitive and easy to.. Agree with with hyphens will be confusing to read the endpoint applied to multiple actions, controllers,.! So try to avoid is breaking your existing working APIs to use and understand a server-managed directory of resources should... Be done to your APIs, internal, external, whatever with is... } /increase-priority PUT /items/ { id } - > get id from token plural singular. Model to the target resource code } by: Lokesh Gupta to this! Uris can be a resource other references as well as limited validity segmented... Define a resource should have a question something interesting to read resources historical/versioned team and the principles of state... Endpoint and its response is the best way to help discoverability API suggestions you list http get /managed-devices? shall! No strangers to APIs especially http methods are technically verbs, hence,!, http POST is not necessary the cart, but actual items the! Contain and also decides the URIs of each contained resource: //documents/null/document-links? type=YOUR-TYPE & version=YOUR-VERSION but would... Processes, I hope by now that you would access the value foo! Job-Type } Creates an instance of a system improve they must be equal to assignerId not.