API Best Practices Blog

RESTful API Design: Teach a Dog to REST »

Author: Brian Mulloy | Posted about about 1 year ago | Posted in: API Tech and Best Practices
Tags: API versioning, events, SOAP vs. REST

UPDATED November 2011: Check out the second edition of the webinar - RESTful API Design.

It's been 10 years since Roy Fielding first defined REST in his dissertation on Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures. Since then, REST is often held as the standard for usable, well-designed, easy-to-integrate APIs.

At the Cloudstock hackathon, I presented "Teach a Dog to REST," asking the question: where are all the elegant REST APIs we'd all hoped to see? While many claim REST has arrived, many APIs in the wild exhibit arbitrary, productivity-killing deviations from true REST. In this presentation, I start with a typical poorly-designed API and iterate it into a well-behaved RESTful API. Check out the presentation (with audio!) below for rules and advice on how to do REST right, including handling complex variations, pagination and API versioning.

Slides + Audio:

Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software ArchitecturesSo, where are all the elegant REST APIs? While many claim REST has arrived, many APIs in the wild exhibit arbitrary, productivity-killing deviations from true REST. We'll start with a typical poorly-designed API and iterate it into a well-behaved RESTful API.