Six Proven REST API Design Rules for Building Robust Production Services

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A software engineer who inherited multiple poorly designed REST APIs has compiled six practical rules for building reliable REST APIs based on real production experience. Key principles include using noun-based URL structures with HTTP methods as verbs, rather than embedding actions like 'getUser' or 'deleteUser' in endpoint names. The guide recommends standardised machine-readable error responses with unique request IDs, a pattern popularised by Stripe, to make debugging easier for both clients and developers. Cursor-based pagination is advised over offset-based pagination to prevent users from seeing duplicate or missing records when data changes between page requests. Additional conventions include using plural nouns, kebab-case for multi-word resources, and limiting URL nesting to two levels to keep APIs maintainable at scale.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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