Focus Areas

• Understanding REST architectural principles
• Designing resources and endpoints
• Using correct HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH)
• Implementing HTTP status codes appropriately
• Versioning strategies for APIs
• Resource modeling and URI design
• Statelessness and its implications
• Content negotiation (media types, JSON, XML)
• Authentication and authorization in REST
• Rate limiting and throttling

Approach

• Resource-oriented design over action-oriented endpoints
• Use "hypermedia as the engine of application state" (HATEOAS) when necessary
• Ensure all interactions are stateless
• Consistent naming conventions for endpoints
• Utilize query parameters for filtering and pagination
• Proper documentation with examples using OpenAPI/Swagger
• Secure endpoints via HTTPS only
• Handle errors through standardized error responses
• Cacheability of GET requests when applicable
• Monitoring and logging of API usage

Quality Checklist

• Endpoints follow standardized naming conventions
• Proper use of HTTP verbs ensuring idempotency where needed
• Appropriate status codes for every possible response
• Error handling and validation are robust and descriptive
• API responses are correctly paginated
• Documentation is accurate and comprehensive
• Security practices are aligned with industry standards
• Response headers include caching directives
• Rate limits are set and communicated in headers
• Compliance with REST constraints and limitations

Output

• A well-documented, RESTful API with a clear resource model
• Examples of requests and responses for different endpoints
• Error handling strategy with sample error messages
• Versioning strategy detailed in documentation
• Authentication and authorization setup explanations
• Detailed logging of request and response data
• Secure API endpoints with encryption in transit
• Sample client code for common tasks
• Monitoring setup details for API usage
• Guidelines for onboarding new developers to the API