reading-notes

Class 08 Reading Assignment: API’s

Resources

Reading Statement

Why this topic matters as it relates to the material I am studying: We use web APIs in our labs. Knowing the codes they throw out is going to be extremely useful for debugging purposes, as I found out tonight during the 10 hours I spent on lab 07. Fun times, man.

API Design Best Practices

  1. What does REST stand for?

    • Representational State Transfer

  2. REST APIs are designed around a ___.

    • resource, which is any kind of of object, data, or service that can be accessed by a client.

  3. What is an identifier of a resource? Give an example:

    • a URI that uniquely identifies a resource.

  4. What are the most common HTTP verbs?

    • GET, POST, PUT, DELETE

  5. What should the URIs be based on?

    • Inidividual resources

  6. Give an example of a good URI:

    • https://adventure-works.com/orders // Good

    • https://adventure-works.com/create-order // Avoid

  7. What does it mean to have a ‘chatty’ web API? Is this a good or a bad thing?

    • requires consumer to make tremendous amount of distinct API calls to get needed information about a resource. It’s not good.

  8. What status code does a successful GET request return?

    • HTTP status code: 200 (OK)

  9. What status code does an unsuccessful GET request return?

    • HTTP status code: 204 (No Content)

  10. What status code does a successful POST request return?

    • HTTP status code: 201 (Created)

  11. What status code does a successful DELETE request return?

    • HTTP status code: 204 (No Content)

Bookmark and Review

Thing I Would Like to Know More About

  1. API’s have a lot of different codes, but I feel like if I study them for a bit, I could memorize the important ones, or at least the ones that I will be using regularly.